As the year 2020 is coming to an end report has revealed that an estimated 7.9 million Zimbabweans, including 4.1 million children, will be in urgent need of life-saving health services and humanitarian assistance in 2021 due to multiple hazards, including the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic and the economic crisis.
The report also stated that more than 38,000 children with severe acute malnutrition (SAM) need treatment; 2.7 million people require safe water and sanitation; 4.6 million children need formal and non-formal education; and 2.2 million people in urban areas require social protection.
UNICEF will in 2021 scale up its support to government-led national and district coordination structures to enable the provision of multi-sectoral life-saving services and efforts to contain the Covid-19 outbreak, the report said.
It further stated that UNICEF will require a whopping sum of US$74.7 million to meet humanitarian needs in Zimbabwe in 2021, including US$18.9 million for emergency social cash transfers and US$16 million for the health response.
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Although Zimbabwe is expected to receive normal to above normal rainfall in the 2020-2021 rainfall season, with La Niña in the forecast, the country is at risk of flash flooding and outbreaks of diarrhoeal diseases, including cholera.
This will necessitate that an estimated 7.9 million people, including 4.1 million children, will urgently require humanitarian assistance in 2021, due to food insecurity, health crises, the impacts of Covid-19 and economic deterioration.
Currently, findings show that nearly 5.5 million people in rural areas are suffering from food insecurity, and acute malnutrition has also increased from 3.6 per cent in 2019 to 4.5 per cent in 2020.
Again, the Covid-19 pandemic has reduced income opportunities and food sources for more than half of the population, and nearly one quarter of Zimbabweans are unable to access basic commodities.
With Zimbabwe going through hyperinflation at 874 per cent as of July 2020; food prices are soaring and the currency is weakened and the population’s purchasing power has declined. Due to the deepening economic crisis, 2.2 million people in urban areas who were food insecure in 2020 will likely remain so in 2021.
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK