Quadruple Olympic champion Sir Mo Farah has issued an urgent plea for help in support of Save the Children’s East Africa Food Crisis Appeal.
The long-distance athlete, who recently secured his legacy as Britain’s greatest distance runner of all time at the Rio 2016 Olympics, is named today as an Ambassador for Save the Children and his first appeal is to raise awareness of the looming famine in East Africa.
Mo, who spent the early years of his life in Somalia and has family living in some of the worst affected areas, has become deeply concerned about the rapidly deteriorating crisis.
Speaking this week in a video appeal for Save the Children, he said that he is devastated by the news that around one million Somali children are predicted to become malnourished this year, with almost 200,000 at risk of death from severe acute malnutrition.
The four-time Olympic Gold medal winner said: “I’m completely devastated – this shouldn’t be happening in 2017. The drought is really bad and there are millions of children at risk of starvation. I was born in Somalia and it breaks my heart to hear stories of how families are suffering. We have to act now; millions of lives are at stake – and young children are especially vulnerable.”
