Emergency food supplies are running out in Nigeria, Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan, Save the Children warns.Millions of children across four African countries could die of malnutrition in the next three months, Save the Children has warned, as emergency food supplies dwindle as a result of international aid cuts.Save the Children said on Thursday that Nigeria, Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan were expected to run out of so-called “ready-to-use therapeutic food” (RUTF), a nutritional paste that has a long shelf life and does not need refrigeration.In Nigeria alone, the lives of 3.5 million children under age five who are suffering from severe acute malnutrition will be under threat without access to treatment and nutrition support, the humanitarian group said.“Imagine being a parent with a severely malnourished child,” Yvonne Arunga, Save the Children’s regional director for East and Southern Africa, said in a statement.“Now imagine that the only thing that could help your child bounce back from the brink of death is therapeutic food and that food is out of stock when it was once available.”The warning comes just months after the United Nations announced sweeping programme cuts in June amid what the UN’s humanitarian office described as “the deepest funding cuts ever to hit the international humanitarian sector”.“We have been forced into a triage of human survival,” UN aid chief Tom Fletcher said at the time.“The math is cruel, and the consequences are heartbreaking. Too many people will not get the support they need, but we will save as many lives as we can with the resources we are …
