Remember that famine?

You might think that no one would decry the success of emergency aid appeals. The passionate drives for donations and generous giving across the world in response to the famine in East Africa over the summer certainly had an alleviating impact, with the DEC charities group suggesting nine million people have received and benefited from the aid.

But the famine continues to ravage the East African countries as it slips from the public consciousness. Last week the UN announced that the famine hasn't even peaked, with more than a million Somalis having fled their homes.

The fever of the emergency aid drive felt here in the UK has long since trailed off, and while 750,000 people in Somalia are at risk of dying by the end of the year, we look to new and so more glamorous news stories. Our gaze, via that of the media, wanders elsewhere. This diminishing concern despite continued disaster is symptomatic of the fleeting attention span of the modern Western society. We can't be bothered by anything that doesn't give us immediate response and direct gratification.

And that is the crux of the problem with these emergency aid drives, illustrated so clearly by the famine in the Horn of Africa: emergency aid is necessary, but it won't fix anything in the long term.

The countries remain in the state they were before the disaster, ripe and ready for equally dire national crises next time a severe drought comes around, despite the emergency relief. There is a need for aid with slower returns. We forgot too readily the droughts and food shortages we gave aid to in the same areas in 2000, 2002-2003, 2006, and repeatedly over the previous decades - and look set to do the same with this year's crisis. We've already lost interest in the very real emergency happening today, and we let well alone our irresponsible lack of input into structured, enduring support.

Some signs of hope for a decisive change this time round are emerging, with US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton calling last Thursday for a focus on implementing permanent assistance strategies. However, with US congress proposing a $488 million cut in international governmental aid, the chances of these ideals coming to fruition look rather bleak.

Perhaps the Somali government's hostility towards international aid, making it difficult for the agencies to get in and provide help, has resulted in a impasse from which little relevant news can be drawn, explaining the famine's premature irrelevance in the UK. But this is almost certainly not true, for at least $92 million has been distributed within the country to date by US agencies alone, and Somalia is just one of the four badly affected countries: Ethiopia, Kenya and the Republic of South Sudan have all also received aid successfully, and all require long-term aid too.

Some see emergency aid as actively damaging. Inflation and increased theft causes concern for anti-corruption campaigners, and to some, the steadily increasing populations in these countries despite the regular famines suggests the aid is even unnecessary. This view fails to take into account the basic fact of higher birth-rates in poverty-stricken countries, where the lack of healthcare, education, enfranchisement and contraception drives the population upwards, absences long-term aid could start to address.

As a species based on community, our urge to help in these situations is unsurprising. But we ought to take an interest in lasting amelioration, an eye not only on the immediate but also on the next step along. In the famine in the Horn of Africa, long-term aid is crucial. We dismiss this, caught up in our world of the instantly obtainable; and the cost is lives.

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