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1. Hadero, Ethiopia - – One by one, the children are placed on a
scale hanging from a makeshift wooden stand.
The mothers look pleadingly at the Doctors Without Borders
aid worker, but he keeps his eyes on his clipboard, tallying
the figures that determine whether each child is sick enough
to eat today.
The scales in a rural clinic in Hadero, Ethiopia, are the latest
indicator of the severity of the global food crisis.
There is only enough medicine and high-energy Plumpy'Nut
peanut paste for the most severe cases. Outside, hundreds of
hungry women and children throng the gates, desperate to go
through the same brutal selection process, pushed back by
guards brandishing sticks to clear a path for the next in line.
In this African nation, about 10 million people, more than 12
percent of the population, are now in need of emergency food
aid after a drought wiped out harvests. But because grain is
now twice as expensive as a year ago – if it is available at all
– there is not enough food in Ethiopia to feed everyone in
need.
Some aid workers are concerned that the combination of
forces could force the country into the worst crisis since the
infamous Ethiopian famine that killed an estimated 1 million
people and was brought home to millions of television
viewers across the world in the mid-1980s.
'Prioritizing' aid

2. Aid workers and government officials are thus forced to
quot;prioritize,quot; a harsh but necessary part of any relief effort, but
rarely as grim a task as in Ethiopia at present.
quot;People don't know yet how widespread and severe the world
hunger crisis is,quot; says David Beckmann, president of
Washington D.C.-based Bread for the World. quot;The gruesome
things now happening in Ethiopia may be the first example of
a country that's being pushed into a humanitarian crisis partly
because of bad weather, but partly because of the high price
of food and the high price of fuel.quot;
The World Food Program, for example, is supposed to be
doing its part by procuring emergency rations sufficient for
4.6 million Ethiopians, but because of rising expenses it only
has the grain, oil, and corn-soya blend for about half that
number.
Not much food left to buy
Ethiopia's foreign-funded welfare system, the Productive
Safety Net Program, may get around the food shortage by
simply handing out cash to some of its beneficiaries who
need extra help this year due to the drought. But even with
cash in hand, some worry whether there will be any food at
all left to buy.
The shortfall in this so-called preventative component of the
relief effort means that clinics like the one in Hadero could
be thronged by even larger crowds of women and children in
mortal need of intensive, and expensive, treatment.

3. quot;It is quite important to inject food rapidly into the
community,quot; says François Colas, country director in
Ethiopia for the Belgian chapter of Doctors without Borders.
quot;As long as food isn't distributed, we will see people falling
into severe malnutrition.quot;
The Ethiopian government said earlier this month that 75,000
children are already in peril from the drought.
Most are now in the country's southern lowlands, though the
crisis is spreading to the northern highlands.
Drought-stricken zones have been divided into six priority
levels, depending on the prevalence of malnourishment.
The largest aid efforts are now under way in areas in the top
two categories.
How villages bear the hunger
Still, the crisis does not conform to administrative
boundaries, and on the edges of aid operations, some villages
are quietly bearing their hunger.
In the Ethiopian village of Kamecho, in one area on the cusp
of a priority zone, a young boy jogs along the muddy path,
dutifully pointing out the households with malnourished
children.
Word spreads that a foreigner has arrived at this remote spot,
accessible only by a footbridge.
Parents emerge from huts and fields carrying listless children
appear from their huts and fields carrying listless children.

4. One woman marches to the center of the gathering crowd
with a bundle in her arms.
She throws the threadbare blanket to the ground and holds up
her frightened daughter, the child's lip quivering as her eyes
dart from face to face, her bony legs swinging limply below
her swollen belly.
She had brought her daughter to a nearby clinic for help, but
when the staff discovered that the child was not only
malnourished but afflicted with tuberculosis, they referred
the child to a hospital 34 miles away in Hosaina.
One staff member, speaking anonymously, says that every
week the clinic refers as many as six cases of malnourished
children with complications, knowing that most will never
make it.
quot;We refer the kids to the hospital in the hope that they will of
course go and be healed, but that is usually not the case, and
it is horrible,quot; he says.
Neighbors tell a similar story in Kamecho.
Unable to afford transportation to the hospital, they returned
to plow their fields in hope that their children will survive
another two months until the next harvest.
The Irish organization Concern says that help may come
sooner if it secures the resources to set up operations in the
area.

5. All together, aid operations in Ethiopia will need at least
another $300 million this year to fill the shortfall.
The US, Britain, and other countries are likely to step up, but
even if these donors provide more funds tomorrow, it will
take as long as eight weeks to procure food internationally.
And once reaches the country, truckers are in short supply to
distribute the aid, sometimes canceling delivery contracts at
the last minute as more lucrative opportunities arise.
Until more aid arrives, government agencies and
international organizations are likely to continue to
concentrate their resources in the neediest areas – weighing
the indicators by the much more convenient statistical scale.