Aug 26 2011
The African Union (A.U.) "held a rare fundraiser in Ethiopia Thursday in a bid to plug a $1.1 billion shortfall in aid for millions facing starvation in the Horn of Africa's worst drought in decades," Agence France-Presse reports. The A.U. has pledged $500,000 of an estimated $2.4 billion "required to assist the 12.4 million drought victims," according to AFP (Vaughan, 8/25).
"African leaders ... will be expected to promise over $50 million to the A.U. humanitarian disaster fund based on a pre-existing formula for contributions to the A.U.," the Guardian writes (Tran, 8/24). On the eve of the meeting, U.N. officials called "on countries, businesses and individuals to give generously to support efforts to tackle the food security crisis ... warning that the world cannot 'afford to lose momentum' in the fight against famine, disease and starvation," the U.N. News Centre reports (8/24).
This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente. |