Britain said on Wednesday that hundreds of thousands of children could starve to death in Somalia if the international community did not ramp up its response to the famine there, and pledged a further $48 million to aid children and livestock owners, Reuters reported. The latest pledge brings Britain's total aid to help tackle what aid agencies are calling the worst drought in decades to hit Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia, to over 100 million pounds. Within the newly announced British package, 25 million pounds will go to UNICEF to provide 192,000 people with two months of supplementary rations and to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of children against measles and polio, a statement issued by the Department for International Development said. A further 4 million pounds are earmarked for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation to support the treatment and vaccination of more than 2 million animals weakened by drought, on whom 70,000 livestock owners depend. Japan has also pledged about $600,000 worth of aid to the U.N. refugee agency to help famine victims at the Dadaab refugee camp in northern Kenya, home to 440,000 Somali refugees.
