A girl holds a younger sibling at a therapeutic feeding centr. She, together with the girl behind her, has temporarily left school to care for their siblings while their mothers attend to other children at home or search for water for livestock. The baby has an intravenous feeding tube taped to his face.

A woman feeds her malnourished child therapeutic milk at a funding-supported Hospital in the town drought-ravaged. The hospital is the only medical facility in an area comprising over 1 million people, yet it has just 50 beds. Patients routinely sleep on the floor, in corridors and in the courtyard outside.

Boys carry containers of water that they have collected from a generator-powered well in the remote, mountainous village in the drought-ravaged. The fund raising organization-provided well is the only source of water for the village, where it has not rained for three years. On some days, there is no fuel for the pump, and villagers go without water.

Children and women walk home to their village, carrying provisions from a therapeutic feeding centre and medical clinic run (Charity Maternity Homes) in the village. The women carry infants on their backs and together tote a sack containing maize flour, dried beans and oil. The local supported NGO provides medical care and supplementary feeding for children, as well as for pregnant and lactating women.

Girls and women fill containers with water from a large puddle in the middle of the road. The puddle, which appeared after a rare day of rain, is contaminated by waste products from the animals that also drink from it. Still, it is the only available water source and hope help can camp nearby until it is gone.

A woman stands by a water tank during a rainfall, in the village of Shimbirey in North-Eastern Province, Kenya. The tank was provided by NGO and affiliates on the first day of rain following the long drought. The rains have come too late to bring relief, instead they bring increased risk of water-borne disease and wash away the youngs crops that have managed to grow.

Children and women wait outside a clinic run by the international NGO Médécins sans frontières. The clinic is treating children for malnutrition, but many also have kala-azar (black fever) and measles.

Children and women surround a water tanker that has just arrived. Twice each week, the truck fills several 55-gallon drums with the community's water ration.IN this case very few people live in this area, because it is very hot, the lake water is undrinkable, and the closest water source is 40 km away.

Inhabitants live in makeshift huts and caves, and make their living crafting and selling trinkets to occasional tourists. Today, some families have already used their previous ration, and boys are filling their jerrycans directly from the truck. NGO provides the fuel for the water tankers, which also fill up with water at a NGO water point.

Health worker Farah Mohamed Lefe takes information from a boy and his father, at a community centre in the village. They are sitting on bags of grain that bear the World Food Programme logo. The mobile health team, which travels to remote areas by truck, is one of 11 UNICEF-supported 'mobile clinics' that take medicine and food directly to the communities that need it.

A young pastoralist carries a newborn goat as he drives his livestock out of the town in search of rain in other parts of the drought-ravaged. Behind him, a flag bearing the logo of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) marks an ICRC water point.

A toddler is weighed at the Garissa Provincial General Hospital in the town of Garissa, capital of North-Eastern Province, Kenya. Behind her, a woman health worker reviews her medical information. Malnourished children have been arriving at the NGO-supported hospital in greater numbers since the drought began.

A girl carries firewood on her back at a camp for persons displaced by the drought, in the town of Wajid in the southern Bakool Region, Somalia. Many families have walked for days to access the town's higher water tables and humanitarian aid. A row of makeshift tents is visible behind her.

Noorparana Kasino, a nomadic Masai tribeswoman, plays with one of her grandchildren outside the family's temporary home in the village of Kajiado, near Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. The child's father has died and the family lost all its livestock during the recent drought. They have moved from their home several kilometres away to be closer to relatives and to food aid, on which they now depend for survival.