Uganda’s Jewish community starving because of food shortage

Elevate Christian Network :: Humanitarian Relief News

Uganda’s Jewish Community: “People look dehydrated and starving,” Gershom Sizomu, the community’s rabbi, told JTA on Tuesday. “People got sick and weak, and there are people who died because of complications because of the food shortage. People were already sick, so without food they become weaker and weaker.”

Sizomu told JTA that the Abayudaya, who rely on their own crops to survive, have been hit hard by the drought. While conditions are easing now because the harvest season has arrived for maize and beans, many families are subsisting on one meal a day, he said.

The Devastating Effects of the Food Shortage

Sizomu went on to say, “There are people who died because of complications because of the food shortage. Two community members who already were sick have died of malnutrition. Fleeing the area is useless, food shortages are plaguing the cities, too.”

The community, whose members converted to Judaism under Conservative auspices about 15 years ago, stays in regular touch with Jewish communities in the United States and Israel. But only one American synagogue has provided famine relief to the Abayudaya.   Read the full story…. timesofisrael.com

 

 

Across the web:

Madagascar skirted famine – barely. Now, it’s boosting resilience before drought returns. – Christian Science Monitor In international aid jargon, that meant that more than half a million people were enduring crisis-level “Phase 3” food insecurity. Another 330,000 were in even worse shape, suffering emergency-level “Phase 4” food shortages. “Phase 5” is famine.

 

 

North Korea on the brink of a ‘catastrophic famine’, says the UN – Metro Rain between April and June this year was lower than in 2001, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. ‘More rains are urgently needed to avoid significant decreases in the main 2017 cereal production season,’ they wrote. ‘Should …

 

 

How Food in Venezuela Went From Subsidized to Scarce – New York Times Since April, protesters have taken to the streets, demanding international food aid and early presidential elections. More than 90 people have been killed in the demonstrations. A local human rights group reported that more than 3,600 people have been …

 

 

Images courtesy: csmonitor.com, metro.co.uk, nytimes.com

See also: Humanitarian Relief News | Global Humanitarians at Elevate Christian Network