The World Health Organization (WHO) is scaling up emergency health response operations across Afar, Amhara and Tigray in Ethiopia to address growing humanitarian and health needs resulting from ongoing hostilities.

Two UN agencies issued a powerful appeal on Wednesday for immediate assistance to help communities already being impacted by the strongest El Niño weather pattern on record.

With global temperature rise set to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, countries “must pull out all the stops” and urgently cut emissions to minimize the overshoot and return to the internationally agreed threshold by the end of this century.