Somalia health clinics will close due to UK aid cuts, charity warns

MPs say Commons vote is needed as funding budget has dropped below 0.7% of UK gross national income

Aid agencies say they are being forced to prepare to suspend health clinics in Somalia serving as many as 2,000 women and children a month, after they have been warned they may face cuts as high as 40% in their UK funding.

Action Against Hunger's East Africa regional director, Hajir Maalim, said: We have been told to make no financial commitments into the next financial year, only a month away, and this makes it very difficult to plan. We are facing the further threat of food shortages and the spread of Covid. Our scenario planning is for likely 40% cuts, and that will mean the closure of frontline health clinics in Mogadishu. If those cuts go ahead it will be like taking the bandages off the wounded. What we need as much as anything is certainty."