No Humanitarian Intervention For Those Who Really Need It

According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), poor sanitation conditions, a shortage of safe water, overcrowding and high malnutrition rates are the perfect combination for infectious diseases, such as cholera and pneumonia, to spread and increase death rates. UNICEF also noted that some 75 percent of all cases of highly infectious acute watery diarrhea are among children under the age of five. 

Health officials are reporting increasing rates of diarrheal illnesses in various regions of Somalia. Cholera outbreaks have also been identified in the Banaadir region (including the capital city, Mogadishu), Lower Shabeelle and Mudug regions. Cholera is a severe diarrheal disease transmitted directly through contaminated food or water. Cholera usually affects populations lacking good sanitation or clean drinking water. In order to minimize risks, it is recommended to wash hands thoroughly before meals, and to use uncontaminated water.

“Our major concern is to monitor and detect new disease outbreaks in the many informal settlements set up by internally displaced people in and around Mogadish,” World Health Organization (WHO) Representative for Somalia Marthe Everard said.

“For the last few years, a network of health workers reporting to the early warning system has been in place, however they report through a health facility or mobile clinic. Yet the large numbers of displaced people in Mogadishu are making it more difficult to record the various diseases,” she added.

“We urgently need more mobile clinics that will provide basic health care services to the many displaced and who will strengthen the reporting on new outbreaks. This is critical to our response and our ability to save lives,” Everard said.

Conditions in Somalia are extremely dangerous. Due to the general internal insecurity caused by the civil war along with dangerous levels of criminal activity. Poor sanitation has led to an increase in the number of confirmed cases of cholera and waterborne diseases across Somalia as more famine-stricken people arrive in already overcrowded camps.

It seems this is a humanitarian crisis if ever there was one. It would appear that since Somalia has no oil reserves, NATO and the West are uninterested in an "intervention" to save Somali lives.