Doctors and nurses inside Ethiopia’s war-torn Tigray region have been left begging for food as the Ethiopian civil war has raged on.
The news: Medics told BBC News that they have been left to beg for their own food to feed themselves. They’ve also been left unpaid for eight months.
What they’re saying: “Most have cut the number of meals they can take per day. Food oil, vegetables, grains — the price has soared so high that it is unthinkable to buy. Some have started begging for food,” one doctor told BBC News.
State of play: The Ethiopian federal government has been battling rebels from Tigray’s northern region since November 2020, as the Deseret News reported.
- Thousands of people have died in the conflict.
- Tigray has been cut off from aid and medical supplies.
- Banks have also been shut down, which has limited how people can pay others.
Flashback: Back in November 2021, the World Food Programme (WFP) said that close to 9.4 million people need humanitarian food assistance in northern Ethiopia because of the ongoing conflict.
- The WFP said close to 50% of pregnant and breastfeeding women in the Amhara and Tigray regions were found to be malnourished.
- About 16% to 28% of children in the northern regions were seen to be malnourished.
- “It is vital that food assistance can cross battle lines to reach families in need,” the WFP said.
Correction: This article previously had a photo that showed rescuers working at the scene of an Ethiopian Airlines flight crash near Bishoftu, or Debre Zeit, south of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Monday, March 11, 2019.