Food shortages prompt NGO feeding centres

The non-governmental organisation World Vision is to establish 181 feeding centres in the central Tagant and Assaba regions of Mauritania, and to provide 5,670 mt of cereal for immediate distribution in response to food shortages in the country. The Christian relief and development organisation said on Monday it had declared Mauritania a "category one emergency" and would provide 6 mt of seed potatoes and quick-growing sorghum to drought affected areas before the end of September. Charles Ossey, national director of World Vision Mauritania, described the situation as grave, and the organisation's web site said the country faced "imminent famine". "If there is no rain by the end of September then the possibility for a harvest is nil," Ossey said. "If there is no production, there is no food and we will have a huge migration from rural to urban areas. "With thousands already hungry, we need to prepare for the worst," he added. According to the NGO, more than two months of drought in Kiffa had left thousands of families with dried-out sorghum and dead livestock. Family members were showing signs of malnutrition, exhaustion and loss of weight, night blindness, scurvy, dehydration and diarrhoea, it said. "Although it is a desert country, during the rainy season the grasses in Mauritania are plentiful and almost waist-high... the land is filled with hundreds of animals eating the grass. This year, there are no tents, no people, just dead animals," said Stan Doerr, manager of World Vision's Kiffa project. Hundreds of dead cows, goats, horses, mules and camels littered the landscape around Kiffa, the agency added. Relief agencies have reported that one million of Mauritania's 2.7 million people face food shortages. On 1 September, the government said nine of 13 regions were seriously affected and appealed for 37,000 mt of cereals and 14,000 mt of complementary food aid for a three-month period. World Vision Mauritania has several projects in three of the hardest hit agro-pastoral regions, targeting a combined total of 270,000 people. More details of the food emergency and WV's work.