PR at Tuesday's Child :: Let them know it's Christmas in East Africa

Press Office at Tuesday’s Child

Let them know it’s Christmas in East Africa

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A Belfast charity worker has spoken of desperate scenes in Kenya where children are begging at the side of the road for food and water.

Orla Sheehan has just returned from a month in East Africa, where she ignored warnings of a security threat and, under guard, drove directly to the areas affected throughout northern Kenya and along the Somalian border. She said she can get aid to those most in need through her Belfast charity Tuesday's Child.

"It's the worst hunger I've seen," said the former pharmacist who set up her charity in 2007. "They are just desperate for water even more than food. And when you give them a little bit of food they are just overjoyed and overwhelmed. In some of the worst areas e.g. Lodwar, Marsabit, it is Christian missionaries, many from northern and southern Ireland, who are doing the greatest work to keep people alive, working unsalaried and relying on the goodwill of donors to continue their work.

"Every village you go in - you are mobbed for food. And people are fighting for food. People were so desperate they were knocking each other down for food."
Ms Sheehan said every £10 pounds donated goes directly to aid with no over-heads or administration costs and sourcing supplies locally.

She said fortified food, milk, water tanks and mosquito nets costing £3 are urgently needed to stop the spread of malaria and Dengue fever as well as basic medicines like anti-malarials, antibiotics and oral rehydration salts.

"People need help desperately. One of the worst things I saw was a child that was abandoned, disabled, malnourished and had malaria. She was five years old. That was in Marsabit, North Central Kenya near the Ethiopian border.

"She was in a small rural dispensary which is treating 300 children a week with malaria, typhoid and cholera."

“In a school for disabled children in North Eastern Kenya, children were hungry, receiving only a little rice a day. Their teacher left her post a few months previously as there were simply no funds to pay her small salary. Elsewhere along the roads, children were waiting in dusty school uniforms in the hope of meeting a volunteer or charity worker who might stop to pay their school fees for at least at school there is a little food available”.

Ms Sheehan returned to Belfast on November 15th from Nairobi, Kenya, a city where thousands scavenge of the main dump for survival. One of the projects we are helping here has rescued 1030 children from the death dump enrolling them in primary schools that provide breakfast and lunch.
She said aid agencies and the media have been put off going into areas of Kenya amid warnings of security threats but she found no security risks along the road, just starving people desperate for help.

"These children are really suffering, not only from hunger, disease and homelessness, but now, with Kenya invading Somalia they have the horror of war to contend with. The tragedy is that there is enough food in Kenya to feed every child in Kenya and Somalia, but corruption and injustice have created a forgotten people struggling for daily survival.

Tuesday's Child is a small charity with its own network working in Lodwar, Marsabit, Wajir, Garissa and Nairobi, Kenya.

Tuesday’s Child helps children in 12 areas around the world, many war-torn.

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For further details please contact Orla Sheehan at 07545452362 or email events@tuesdaychild.org.uk

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