Lifesaving health and nutrition intervention for drought-affected communities in Ceel Barde District Acute food insecurity has continued to worsen across Somalia following series rain failure coupled with conflicts and the secondary impact of COVID-19. Nearly 50 percent of the population in Somalia (7.1 million people) are now facing crisis-level food insecurity or worse through September 2022 with an estimated 213,000 people facing catastrophic hunger and starvation and 800,000 persons have been displaced due to draught. According to UNICEF Somalia’s Situation Report No.6, 1.5 million severely malnourished children under the age of five, accounting for 45 per cent of all children are among those affected by the ravaging drought.. The need for life saving responses is urgent.
In Ceel Barde, the situation is dire with the potential of famine occurring high. People are moving away from their homes and farmlands due to prolonged draught that has resulted in crop failure and loss of animals, insecurity, and limited access to humanitarian services. Pastoral, IDPs and urban communities district have borne the brunt facing constrained access to basic services such as health and nutrition services due to high cost of living, lack of services and distance to the nearest health facilities where they exist.
In the proposed project, SOLO in partnership with SHF will seek to intervene by providing integrated health and nutrition services that will expand the availability of quality services to boys, girls, women, and men who are at heightened risk of morbidity and mortality from diseases and malnutrition. This will be done through one health center and three mobile units putting special attention to areas that that are not accessing sufficient health and nutrition services with women, boys, girls from vulnerable and marginalized families including those from internally displaced households, nomads, urban poor, and persons with disabilities prioritized resulting in reduced morbidity and mortality from poor health. 
In designing and setting up the project, Somalia integrated management of acute malnutrition(IMAM) guidelines will be applied ensuring all the four sites provide treatment of severe acute malnutrition at Outpatient Therapeutic sites for children 6-59 months and pregnant and lactating as well as quality primary health care services such as routine immunization, treatment of illnesses at outpatient clinics, ANC services, skilled delivery and response to emergencies including Acute Watery Diarrhea(AWD)/Cholera and measles. In addition, children and mothers will receive Vitamin A supplementation and will be dewormed to enhance their chances of survival. Extensive community sensitization and education will be rolled out by deploying community health workers and conducting community dialogue to achieve community participation and sustained use of services. Active and passive case finding of sick and malnourished children will be carried through the community health workers and frontline health and nutrition workers to ensure sick children are identified early enough and appropriate treatment instituted without delay. Consequently, 3,774 girls and 3,626 boys, and 3,330 pregnant and lactating mothers will access a range of preventive and curative nutrition services including treatment of 960 children at OTP sites following screening of 4,440 children under five years for acute malnutrition.
So that services are integrated, and optimal continuum of care is attained, mapping of partners providing complementary services such as inpatient management of acute malnutrition and secondary healthcare will be carried out and cross transfer of case established.