Eamon Timmins: Urgent action can stop thousands of famine deaths in Somalia

One of my abiding memories from 1992 was the silence of a clinic in Baidoa filled with mothers and sick infants, too ill to cry. They were the lucky ones. Many families did not make it that far.

A nurse checks on Jamel* (3), who has measles and a fever, at Banaadir Hospital, Mogadishu, Somalia. *Name has been changed for security reasons to protect the subjects.  Somalia and neighbouring countries are experiencing their fifth failed rainy season. Nobody can survive more than two years without proper rain. So famine is looming once again. Photo: Mustafa Saeed/Concern Worldwide

A famine is expected to be declared in Somalia in the coming weeks. It will make headline news, but news reports will fail to capture the horror that famine entails.

This time 30 years ago, as a reporter for the then Cork Examiner, I went to Somalia to report on the famine in which up to 300,000 people died. My memories of three visits to the war-torn, drought-stricken country are the stuff of nightmares. Now, three decades later, famine looms again.