UN agency feeds additional 4,000 flood-beleaguered families in Bolivia

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is feeding an additional 4,000 families in Bolivia, which has been in a state of emergency for a month due to weeks of heavy rains affecting hundreds of thousands of people.

WFP has already delivered food, including micronutrient fortified foods targeted mainly at women and children to prevent a nutritional crisis, to almost 13,000 families in five of the country’s nine Departments.

This latest distribution is in yet another Department, Beni, where approximately 14,000 families have been devastated by floods. Water levels have risen in the Mamore River near Beni’s capital, Trinidad, forcing 235 families to evacuate the area.

“The World Food Programme is working very quickly to assist all of these disaster victims,” said Vitoria Ginja, the agency’s Bolivia Country Director. “With the help of the Government and our partners, we will do our best to deliver relief food to them as rapidly as possible.”

WFP is also moving quickly to resupply its warehouse stocks of food in the badly affected city of Santa Cruz.

The El Niño phenomenon is at the root of the especially harsh rain and resulting floods and landslides that have ravaged the country.