BRIAN NELSON, CNN ANCHOR: After three years of drought, Ethiopia is in the throes of one of its most severe food shortages in decades. Ben Wedeman offers a firsthand look at the struggle for survival, and the challenges of reporting it.</s>BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Reporting on the drought in Eastern Ethiopia takes you down the roughest, dusty tracks to the most remote corners of an isolated region in a vast land, to villages where the most basic of modern conveniences are just a rumor. It's a challenge for journalists, but a logistical nightmare for aid agencies trying to truck in hundreds of thousands of tons of food. (on camera): The United Nations defines famine as when more than 50 percent of the population will die from hunger or hunger-related diseases within three to four weeks. Relief officials here in Gode say that many areas of Eastern Ethiopia have already crossed the threshold from food shortage to famine. (voice-over): In remote villages and large towns alike, graveyards are filling up with the dead, mostly children, the first to die when food runs out. But many of the adults aren't far behind. Like Mariam Musa (ph), already weakened by tuberculosis. And everywhere, people mistake journalists for aid workers bearing food, water and medicine. And always from everyone, we hear the same appeal to the outside world -- help us. With much of the population beyond the reach of the aid agencies, the people trek to where they hope to find held. Some barely survive the journey. Many of these people, masters of survival in this harshest of environments, have lost everything, everything but their dignity. And even amidst this calamity, somehow they manage to hold on to that last thread of their humanity. Ben Wedeman, CNN, Gode, in Eastern Ethiopia.
In Throes of Severe Food Shortage, Struggle for Survival in Ethiopia