More than 31 million people across West and Central Africa may not have enough to eat in the coming months as hunger rises due to an “explosive mix” of skyrocketing food prices, conflict and fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday. 

With the number of new COVID-19 cases nearly doubling over the past two months, approaching the highest infection rate the world has seen during the pandemic, the unequal distribution of vaccines is not only a moral outrage, but economically and epidemiologically self-defeating, the head of the UN health agency told a special ministerial meeting of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on Friday.

COVID-19 infections are approaching their highest rates since the pandemic began just over a year ago, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Friday. 

A spate of clashes involving Government security forces and insurgent groups in northeast Nigeria has caused mass displacement and threatened humanitarian assistance, as armed groups go “house-to-house” hunting for aid workers, the UN said on Friday.