The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has issued an urgent warning that it will exhaust its supply of lifesaving food for children suffering from acute malnutrition in Ethiopia and Nigeria within the next two months due to a dire funding shortfall, exacerbated by U.S. foreign aid cuts under the Trump administration.
According to UNICEF, approximately 1.3 million children under the age of five facing severe acute malnutrition in Ethiopia and Nigeria are at risk of losing access to critical support this year. The agency stressed that without immediate funding, tens of thousands of vulnerable children will be left without essential treatment.
“Without new funding, we will run out of our supply chain of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food by May. That means that 70,000 children in Ethiopia who rely on this treatment cannot be served,” said Kitty Van der Heijden, UNICEF’s Deputy Executive Director, in a press briefing from Abuja. “Interruption to continuous treatment is life-threatening.”
In Nigeria, the situation is equally dire. UNICEF revealed that it could run out of supplies to feed 80,000 severely malnourished children as soon as the end of this month, further deepening the humanitarian crisis.
Van der Heijden recounted witnessing harrowing conditions in a hospital in Maiduguri, where she saw a child so malnourished that her skin was peeling off. The ongoing funding crisis, she warned, is rapidly escalating into a catastrophic child survival crisis.
The crisis has been compounded by international donors reducing contributions to UN agencies in recent years. The financial strain intensified after the United States, historically UNICEF’s largest donor, imposed a 90-day pause on all U.S. foreign aid upon President Donald Trump’s return to office in January. The abrupt halt to multiple U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) programs worldwide has severely disrupted the delivery of vital food and medical aid, throwing global humanitarian relief efforts into disarray.
“This funding crisis will become a child survival crisis,” Van der Heijden cautioned, adding that the abrupt funding cuts left UNICEF with no time to mitigate the risks.
Health programs in Ethiopia have also suffered devastating setbacks. UNICEF reported that budget shortfalls have led to the closure of 23 mobile health clinics providing nutrition and malaria care for pregnant women and children in the Afar region, leaving only seven still operational.
As malnutrition rates surge and healthcare access dwindles, aid organizations are sounding the alarm, urging immediate international intervention to prevent an impending humanitarian disaster in Ethiopia and Nigeria.
