The UN is calling the crisis “the world’s worst humanitarian disaster” and estimates that tens of thousands of people have already died from starvation and related diseases as famine-like conditions threaten the lives of some 12 million people in drought-stricken Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia.

With the Horn of Africa in the grip of a critical food shortage, Samaritan’s Purse is distributing tons of food staples to hungry families in drought-stricken Kenya, near the Somali border.

A team that includes relief and nutrition specialists in northeast Kenya has set up a base of operations in Garissa, Kenya, along the Kenya/Somalia border and begun distributing tons of maize, beans, and cooking oil.

Samaritan’s Purse’s initial response will include providing food rations to 2,100 families, meals to 1,700 school children, and implementing therapeutic care and supplemental feeding programs for hundreds of malnourished children. Five warehouse spaces with a total capacity to store 100 metric tons of food have been secured. In coordination with local partners sites have been identified for food distributions and therapeutic nutritional interventions. These sites include a health clinic and primary school.

Clean water is another desperate need. In some areas, only 20 percent of the families have access to safe drinking water. Many people are now forced to walk miles to reach a water source. As populations are shifting toward areas with better access to water, community resources are being severely strained. We are identifying areas to drill at least five boreholes to provide water for families and their livestock.

Samaritan’s Purse also has met with representatives from the Kenyan Ministry of Health and Ministry of Water to help assess needs and to coordinate our response with them. Our team is also coordinating with other agencies on the ground to provide additional emergency relief.

The crisis was brought on by two years of drought that is the worst in 60 years. Massive crop failure and loss of livestock have led to extreme food shortages in a region straddling Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia—a region that has been labeled the “triangle of death.”

As a result, hundreds of thousands of people without food and water have fled to makeshift camps in northeast Kenya looking for emergency aid. Many of the displaced are refugees from neighboring Somalia, who left their war-torn country in hopes of finding help over the border. Much of Somalia is controlled by a militant group, affiliated with al Qaeda, that has denied that a food shortage exists and threatened to maintain their ban on food aid.

The camps in Kenya are overcrowded, and resources are stretched beyond capacity. Conditions aren’t much better outside the camps with households facing dire shortages of food and water.

Some of the worst hit counties include Wajir and Garissa, areas considered the focal point of the Somalia refugee influx. In these areas, particularly where Samaritan’s Purse partners are involved, there is limited government assistance and little help from other agencies.

Please pray for the people impacted by malnutrition and starvation, for our staff and church partners in the region, that the conditions that are causing this catastrophic food shortage will end, and for God’s help in meeting the overwhelming needs of the region.