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Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Thursday, September 8th. I'm Naila Boudou. Here's what

you need to know today. How a ruling on HIV prep meds could affect access to other preventative care.

But first today's one big thing. Famine is coming to East Africa.

More than 7 million people in Somalia, half of its population, are in dire need of food assistance,

and the UN has warned that famine there is at the door. East Africa has had four straight failed

rainy seasons for the first time in more than half a century. That, combined with rising food prices,

exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, are endagering an estimated 20 million people in the Horn of

Africa region. Axios, deputy world editor. Lauren Whitney Gottbruth is here with the big picture.

Hi, Lauren Whitney. Hi. Nice to be here. How much has the war made the food situation

worse in Somalia and East Africa? Yeah, well, a lot of these countries, particularly in the Horn of

Africa, have heavily relied on wheat and other food and also fertilizer, etc. From Ukraine and

Russia, I think in Somalia, historically about 90% of their wheat has come from one of the two

countries. So when the wars started, A, prices went up because obviously it was harder to get wheat out,

but also Russia was blockading a lot of exports of wheat, particularly from Ukraine. We've seen some

progress on getting some of that wheat out, but it's already had an enormous impact on countries

that were relying on it. And what about climate change? How has the drought affected people's

ability to grow their own food there? For years, climate scientists have said that Somalia and other

parts of the Horn of Africa would continue to face dry, dry seasons. And we've seen that for

...