UAE continues relief operations to save victims of draught and famine in Somalia

Mogadishu - Aug 14, 2011 (WAM) - The UAE continued its relief operations to save the victims of drought and famine in Somalia as per the directives of President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan and His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of UAE and Ruler of Dubai.
The emergency relief team of the UAE Red Crescent currently on ground in the Horn of Africa dispatched yesterday to a number of makeshift camps near Mogadishu, a convoy carrying 40 tons of essential food supplies sufficient for a thousand families for a period of one month.
The relief operations are supported by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces and followed up by HH Sheikh Hamdan bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Ruler's Representative in the Western Region Chairman of the Red Crescent Authority (RCA).
In the coming weeks, the RCA will continue to dispatch daily aid convoys to other camps where tens of thousands of refugees keep arriving in search of help as the famine looms large over the Horn of Africa in its worst draught in half a century.
So far the UAE's emergency relief operations have reached ten refugee camps in the neighbourhoods in and around Mogadishu where tens of thousands of displaced people need food, accommodation and healthcare.
The UAE relief team has intensified efforts to improve access of the refugees suffering from severe malnutrition to health care by way of sending medical convoys to the camps in coordination with the Ministry of Health and the Somali Red Crescent clinic in Mogadishu, which provided medical staff who volunteer in a number of vital areas . - Emirates News Agency, WAM