[Source: BBC]
Some of the nurses and doctors at the biggest hospital in Ethiopia’s war-torn Tigray region are having to beg for food to feed themselves, one of the medics has told the BBC.
They have not been paid for eight months, forcing them to find other ways of supporting their families, he said.
The doctor’s account comes as the UN reports that “severe hunger” was hitting ever more people in Tigray.
It says that 2.2 million people “are suffering an extreme lack of food”.
Half of all pregnant and breastfeeding women are suffering from malnutrition, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) survey found.
Overall, in Tigray and the other two regions affected by the months of fighting, Amhara and Afar, nine million people need some form of food assistance, the WFP adds.
Ethiopian federal government forces have been battling rebels from the northern Tigray region since November 2020 in a conflict that has killed thousands of people.
For a lot of that time much of Tigray has been cut off, making it hard to deliver vital aid and medical supplies. Banks have also been shut meaning that people cannot access savings or funds to pay others.
Doctors and nurses have not been spared from the suffering.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a doctor from Ayder Hospital, in Tigray’s capital, Mekelle, told the BBC that seeing nurses and doctors queuing for food parcels had become normal over the past seven months.
