Quarterly Progress Report: Integrated Drought Response in the Ethiopian Somali Region

The project focuses on providing integrated emergency response for drought-affected pastoral communities in ten woredas of the region. Mercy Corps Ethiopia is the lead implementer, with Action Contre La Faim Ethiopia as the sub-grantee. The project targets vulnerable communities, including children under five and pregnant and lactating women who are moderately or severely acutely malnourished. The region's pastoralist communities are facing severe drought, leading to water shortages, livestock losses, and decreased milk productivity, resulting in worsening nutritional status of children. The project aims to reduce mortality, morbidity, and suffering associated with moderate and severe acute malnutrition. The project's objectives include reducing mortality and morbidity associated with moderate and severe malnutrition, improving awareness of the community through health education, improving the capacity of healthcare providers, strengthening the government health system, and improving health facility sanitation infrastructure. The project also aims to provide timely distribution of Corn Soya Blend Plus Plus (CSB++) for under-five children and pregnant and lactating women with moderate acute malnutrition. The project's planned activities for the first quarter included community mobilization, management of moderate acute malnutrition cases, management of severe acute malnutrition cases, hygiene promotion services, and sanitation infrastructure development. The project also aimed to provide training to technical staff on Community Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) and Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) services. Despite a four-week delay in project approval, Mercy Corps began preparatory work, including procurement of materials and staff interviews. Once the project was approved, Mercy Corps began implementation, training technical teams on SAM management, MIYCN, and WASH. The project procured all required materials, including OTP and SC materials, jerricans, buckets, handwashing soap, and IEC/BCC materials. The project received commodities management training from Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Ethiopia and received 104MT CSB++ from the Nazareth CRS warehouse. However, distribution of CSB++ and Non-Food Items (NFIs) did not occur during the first quarter due to delays in signing the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between CRS and Mercy Corps. The project aims to distribute CSB++ and NFIs to all woredas from January 2017. Routine screening by Health Extension Workers (HEWs) identified 11,803 beneficiaries in Jarar and Shabelle zones who will be admitted into the Targeted Supplementary Feeding Program (TSFP) in January 2017. Additionally, 213 SAM cases were screened and immediately admitted into OTP, and 143 SAM cases with medical complications were admitted in 7 Stabilization Centers (SCs).