As many as 14,000 Somalis have crossed into neighboring Kenya since September, according to United Nations estimates. That brings the total for the year to 34,000, the biggest influx since the early 1990s, when the collapse of Mohammed Siad Barre's dictatorship opened a decade and a half of anarchy that made the Horn of Africa country the world's best-known failed state.
“Last week, a 3-year-old Somali girl in the camps was diagnosed with polio...” | The new arrivals now huddle alongside 130,000 other Somalis in refugee camps that sprawl across the sandy scrubland of eastern Kenya. Thousands more are expected to arrive in the coming weeks, and aid agencies are concerned about high rates of malnutrition and the threat of diseases from over the border, where there's no functioning health-care system.
Last week, a 3-year-old Somali girl in the camps was diagnosed with polio, the first case of the crippling disease in Kenya in more than two decades. The U.N. has appealed for $35 million in emergency aid to handle the influx. |