Children are dieing of hunger in Oromia

By Barry Malone

SIRARO, Ethiopia (Reuters) - Ethiopian mother Ayantu Tamon has lost a child to hunger every year for the last four and now cradles her severely malnourished and weakened three-year-old son Hirbu in her arms.

"I just hope God lets him live," she says. "I have only two children left."

Hirbu is being fed by drip at Rophi Catholic Church in Siraro, a remote farming area 350 km (220 miles) south of the capital Addis Ababa.

He is one of 233 children who have been brought starving to the small Sisters of Mercy church in just the last three weeks.

The U.N. Children's Agency UNICEF says a recent drought in Ethiopia has caused a food crisis and estimates 126,000 children are suffering from severe malnutrition.

But the government and aid agencies are struggling to find money to help, with international food prices rising sharply.

UNICEF says 6 million Ethiopian children under the age of five may be at risk of malnutrition.

And the U.N. World Food Programme estimates 3.4 million of Ethiopia's more than 80 million people will need food relief from July to September.

"The great tragedy is that Ethiopia had been making some impressive improvements before this drought," said Viviane Van Steirteghem, UNICEF deputy representative in the country.

Ethiopia, sub-Saharan Africa's second most populous nation, had been cited as an example to other African countries after reducing its infant mortality rate to 123 deaths from every 1,000 births from 166 in just five years.

"UNFORTUNATE CHAIN"

Innovative schemes to reduce the impact of drought and train local people as health workers were also introduced and much praised internationally.

"It's a chain of unfortunate events that has led to this," says Lisetta Trebbi, Head of Relief the United Nation's World Food Programme in Ethiopia.

"We have drought -- a really poor rainy season -- and, of course, we have high food prices worldwide."

The global rise in food prices has hit the WFP hard.

The organisation now needs to raise $147 million to tackle Ethiopia's needs. Aid workers say the money isn't coming in time, with donors concentrating on disaster-hit China and Myanmar.

At Rophi Catholic Church, mothers hold their sick children in their laps, sitting on dirty sheets sweltering in the heat inside makeshift tents. "It's not like the normal sound of children crying," said one nun. "It's desperate."

The Sisters of Mercy and the local government were caring for the children who started arriving at the rate of about 20 a day to a height of 74 last Friday alone.

"There are more people out there who would normally depend on a harvest in July," Trebbi said.

"But, because of the drought, they will not now get that harvest and their food reserves will be gone. This situation is deteriorating very rapidly."