Protecting the health and livelihoods of severely drought-affected communities of Shebelle Zone, Somali Region, Ethiopia Project Summary :	The mid-November federal NDRMC ‘alert’ confirms late onset, erratic and poor autumn deyr rains in southern Somali region (also across the whole of southern Ethiopia). As these rains follow poor spring guu rains, the Strategic Advisory Group (SAG) to the DRM ATF is describing southern Somali region as in the ‘alarm’ phase of the drought cycle with a high probability of moving to a full drought emergency in the coming month. 
Working as a Consortium, Save the Children together with Mercy Corps (MC), Islamic Relief (IR), Action Against Hunger (ACF), and Veterinaries sans Frontiers – Swiss (VSF-S) are planning lifesaving and livelihood protection interventions in Somali Region. The interventions are presented under the HRD’s objective 2 and informed by field missions including the recent meher assessments and associated strategic documents that have been prepared to improve drought risk management outcomes. Save the Children is also planning Health and WASH interventions to mitigate and respond to health outbreaks.
Objective 1: Saving lives 
In mid-November 2016, Somali region issued a call for water trucking to 1.1 million people in 28 affected woredas as the lack of rain had resulted in rapidly declining water availability – ponds/ haffirs and birkads drying and the discharge rates of wells declining. 
Perhaps not surprisingly, there have been serious outbreaks of AWD as people take unsafe water from sources. In some areas even health centers do not have access to clean drinking which has further compounded health risks. In response to the ongoing Acute Watery Diarrhea (AWD) and other vaccine preventable disease outbreaks there is a plan to provide immediate lifesaving and preparedness measures for future disease outbreaks and response activities for the current AWD and other outbreak prone public health problems. The project activities are directly linked with the National and regional Public health emergency management (PHEM) and AWD preparedness and response plan objective, ‘saving of the lives of the      outbreak affected and outbreak prone communities’. The proposed project geographical locations in Somali region are among the health cluster task force priority areas for emergency Health interventions. Additionally, the project design adheres with the Health cluster priorities and Health Cluster objective 2, “epidemic disease outbreaks in high-risk areas detected and responded to on time”. to prevent vaccine preventable disease like measles, support will be provided in regard to strengthening routine vaccination system. 

For these reasons it is proposed to provide clean water through water trucking and other locally available opportunities – and strength health services in particular to cope with diseases that typically spike during times of drought e.g. measles, meningitis and alike. Other activities planned include provision of water treatment chemicals, community mobilization through awareness workshops, provision of HTH chlorine for health facilities, supplying of health facilities with drugs and medical supplies construct hand washing point and bathing facilities.

Objective 2: Protect and restore livelihoods Following the delayed onset, erratic and poor autumn deyr rain and the poor regeneration of browse and pasture, livestock that were already in poor condition have continued to lose weight with the result that pastoral households have little or no access to milk and increasing numbers of households are reporting livestock deaths.
Recognizing the forecast for intensifying drought conditions and the escalating threats to livestock the SAG issued a Livestock Contingency Plan (Oct 2016) that prioritized livestock feed supplementation of core breeding animals, destocking – commercial and slaughter and animal health in particular for those animals receiving supplementary livestock feed. Accordingly, the proposed activities include animal health, animal feed, destocking and Cash for work.