UN agencies take urgent steps to help victims of cold snap in Peru

With 50 Peruvian children already dead and 1.4 million people suffering from life-threatening respiratory infections due to the worst cold weather in 30 years, United Nations agencies have launched urgent operations to help hundreds of thousands of youngsters facing starvation and disease in the South American country.

"We really need to prevent this from happening," UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Representative in Peru Andres Franco said, calling for international aid. "There is a big responsibility on the part of the Government and the regional authorities to avoid having to wait until we see the face of death to react.

“After we provide emergency relief we need to prepare these communities for next year, because we can't afford to make the death of children during cold snaps part of normal life in Peru," he added.

The Government in Lima has been overwhelmed by the scale of the emergency and is struggling to reach remote mountain areas where aid is critical. UNICEF is working with local communities to provide children with warm clothing and basic medicines, but further international assistance is urgently needed.

Meanwhile the UN World Food Programme (WFP) will assist more than 15,000 Peruvians, the majority of them children under five or pregnant and lactating women, for the next three months.

Snowstorms and heavy rain have afflicted the south and central highlands of Peru, where temperatures have dropped to as low as -35 C, and the situation is expected to worsen over the next couple of months as the southern hemisphere winter closes in.

In the worst-affected region, three quarters of the population already live in poverty and half the children are chronically malnourished. Hundreds of homes and buildings, including 80 schools, have collapsed under the weight of snow, which has also blocked roads, destroyed grazing land and killed herds of cattle.

In the region, WFP is also providing aid to two other Latin American countries affected by inclement weather. In Nicaragua, where 25 people have been killed and more than 18,000 affected by severe flooding, the agency will distribute emergency food rations to 1,500 families.

And in eastern Cuba, suffering from the worst drought in more than a decade, it will provide a one-month food ration to more than 110,000 people, mostly pregnant and nursing women, children under two, handicapped children and the elderly.