Malawians need urgent food assistance as rains, winds batter the south – UN

Heavy rains and strong winds in Malawi have driven floods across fields already planted for this year’s harvest, affecting tens of thousands of people, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said today.

Residents of worst-hit Chikwawa and Nsanje districts were already receiving food assistance because of the poor 2004/2005 harvest, while across Malawi the national food security situation has continued to worsen, OCHA warned.

Last August, the UN and the Government declared that 4.2 million people would require food assistance through March 2006, but by the end of November that figure had swelled to just over 5 million.

To help those newly added to the list of people needing assistance, UN humanitarian agencies will require 52,700 metric tons of food over the 202,000 metric tons originally requested.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said that while it is cooperating with the Government, the food crisis across Southern Africa and transport obstacles have created major challenges to getting food assistance into the country. But despite this, WFP has almost doubled its school feeding programme to include more than 400,000 children.

Moderate and severe malnutrition increased nationwide to 13.1 per cent in November from 7.6 per cent last October. According to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), admissions of severely malnourished children to 48 Nutrition Rehabilitation Units in November rose 17 per cent compared to the same period in 2004, with the highest jump – 45 per cent – occurring in the southern region. The number of admissions in November over October increased 30 per cent nationwide.

At the end of last August, the UN launched a six-month Flash Appeal for Malawi, requesting $74 million for food and nutritional assistance to support national food distribution as well as voucher schemes and cash subsidies, and to subsidize seed and fertilizers for small farmers. More than two-thirds of the way through the Appeal, just over $41 million has been received to date – or 56 per cent of what is needed, OCHA said.