Ship arrives with US food aid

A ship carrying 2,000 mt of food donated by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to the World Food Programme (WFP) has arrived in Guinea-Bissau, WFP's regional office in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, reported on Wednesday. The shipment arrived on Saturday in the port of Bissau, which is also the country's capital. It will be distributed to school feeding programmes to improve attendance, particularly of girls, and to malnourished women and children. It will also be used to help reactivate agriculture through food-for-work programmes, WFP said. AFP reported on Wednesday that an ongoing drought in parts of the country, including the village of Pirada some 250 km east of Bissau, has been causing many difficulties for local communities. Several wells have dried up, farm animals are dying and, according to the nurse at the Pirada local clinic, more than 40 percent of children under the age of five years are suffering from malnutrition, AFP reported. WFP provides food assistance to about 100,000 of the 1.3 million people in Guinea-Bissau, one of the poorest countries in the world.