Africa News

His name means “wealthy” in the Tigriyna language but he weighs just half what he should.

As the doctor pulls up his jumper and tracksuit bottoms to show his spindly arms and legs, his mother looks on impassively.

She does not want to give her name.

This is the daily reality of hunger and malnutrition after two years of civil war in the northern

Nairobi foots detained patients’ bills for Christmas

Sakaja Arthur Johnson at the Moi International Sports Centre in Kasarani, Nairobi during the swearing in of William Ruto as the 5th President of the Republic of Kenya

Getty ImagesCopyright: Getty Images

Johnson Sakaja says he wants the patients to be with their families for ChristmasImage caption: Johnson Sakaja says he wants the patients to be with their families for Christmas

In Kenya the governor of Nairobi has directed all staterun hospitals to release any patients who are being held because of unpaid bills.

It is common practice for hospitals there to refuse to discharge patients until all medical fees have been paid.

Johnson Sakaja said the county government would foot the bills and described the waiver as a Christmas gift so that people could celebrate with their families.

Kenyans routinely complain that private and governmentrun hospitals charge exorbitant fees, which mean many are unable to seek treatment. Deepening restrictions on ivory trafficking have led to an increase of the trade in hippopotamus teeth, wildlife campaigners are warning, with potentially serious effects for a species already listed as “vulnerable to extinction”.

When the UK last June announced a near-total ban on the trade in elephant ivory, an animal welfare charity studied what happened in three widely used online marketplaces.

Ethiopia civil war: The boy named

Wealthy who weighs half what he should

Ethiopia region of Tigray. A peace deal has ended the fighting but the fallout from the conflict remains.

In August, the UN estimated that nearly one in three children under the age of five in Tigray were malnourished.

As federal government soldiers and Tigrayan forces fought, the Ethiopian authorities either limited or heavily restricted the aid getting into the northern region, leading to an effective blockade.

‘Empty-handed’

Makda, who is the same age as the conflict itself, lies like a baby in the arms of her mother Hiwot.

She is listless and her stomach is heavily swollen.

“It’s become so difficult to get food,” says Hiwot. “It’s very hard to eat even once a day.”

But since she was admitted to hospital, Makda has been getting worse.

“My daughter is in this situation because we’re told there is no medicine. We haven’t been able to get anything,” says Hiwot.

“Even when we were here last year with the same problem, I couldn’t get anything and I went home empty-handed.”

The families of Haftom and Makda have been seeking treatment in Mekelle, the capital of the Tigray region. The BBC filmed and interviewed them within the past month.

After August, as federal government forces took more territory, the Tigrayan authorities agreed to a ceasefire.

Under the terms of the peace deal signed at the beginning of last month, the authorities in the capital, Addis Ababa, said they would send in more aid.

‘Used up in a day’

Dr Kibrom Gebreselassie has been a surgeon at Ayder Referral Hospital for 15 years.

It is the biggest public hospital in the region which is home to seven million people.

“To see young children and mothers suffer and cry every day, it’s traumatising,” says Dr Kibrom.

“A lot of children have died in our hospital because once a child has malnutrition, it’s not only food you have to give them. They need medication, antibiotics, minerals... and we don’t have this.”

Some of what is needed seems to be arriving but not nearly enough.

Dr Kibrom says two trucks with medical supplies from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) were the first to reach Mekelle.

“The amount of medicine that we received was enough for half of our patients and only lasted for a single day,” he sighs.

For each day that aid does not get to the hospital, more patients die.

“Take cancer patients, the situation is very grim. There has been no chemotherapy in the entire Tigray,” says Dr Kibrom.

“Each day, each week, each month, the stage of their cancer worsens.

“If it was treatable before, now it’s becoming inoperable. For those very sick individuals each day, each hour counts.”

This is Makda’s second time in hospital suffering from malnutrition

Poachers target hippos for giant teeth in place of ivory

Deepening restrictions on ivory trafficking have led to an increase of the trade in hippopotamus teeth, wildlife campaigners are warning, with potentially serious effects for a species already listed as “vulnerable to extinction”.

When the UK last June announced a near-total ban on the trade in elephant ivory, an animal welfare charity studied what happened in three widely used online marketplaces.

“We found the increase in hippo ivory trade in the UK within a month after the near total-ban of elephant ivory was introduced,” says Frankie Osuch, lead author of a report released by Born Free in September.

This was “deeply concerning evidence of increased demand for ivory from hippos, whose numbers in the wild are under threat” the report said.

Researchers say this pattern was clear as far back as 1989, when a worldwide ban on trade in ivory was first agreed, and has only intensified as governments have brought in new measures to tighten the ban.

Like ivory, hippo teeth and tusks are often used for decorative carvings, but they are cheaper and easier to obtain.

Hippo body parts can still be traded under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), though all international sales require an export permit.

It’s been calculated that between 1975, when CITES records began, and 2017, 770,000kg of hippo teeth were legally traded. But there is also an illegal trade.

In 2020 hippo teeth were among the mammal body parts most often seized in the EU, according to a European Commission report.

“There are increasing cases of sniffer dogs detecting hippo teeth at different airports in Africa these days, and the detection does not mean all of them are caught, perhaps only half of them are,” says Philip Muruthy, vice-president of the Africa Wildlife Foundation.

A study by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 2016 estimated that the worldwide population of the common hippo was between 115,000 and 130,000 - a drop of 30% since 1994.

Ten countries in West and Central Africa say there has continued to be a sharp decline in numbers, due to poaching and land degradation.

They proposed a complete ban on trade in the run-up to a CITES meeting in Panama last month, but this would only have been possible under CITES rules if there had been more than 50% drop in the population in the last 10 years, and an IUCN analysis did not support this conclusion.

The 10 West and Central African countries then suggested a move called “annotation” that would have resulted in a zeroquota for wild specimens traded for commercial purposes. But this proposal was not supported by the EU or by East and South African countries, who say hippo populations remain at a healthy level.

Some of the East and South African countries - Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe - are also the source of threequarters of the estimated 13,909 hippos whose parts and products were traded between 2009 and 2018.

Joanna Swabe, senior director of public affairs with Humane Society International, points out that little work has been done since 2016 to establish hippo numbers.

“There has been very little scientific research on the actual population of hippos in all of these range countries,” she says. “While at the same time, range countries know what is going on with their hippos within their territories, so they should not be ignored.” Sourc:BBC