Food agreement signed

An agreement to distribute 13,500 mt of food to thousands of Mauritanians in the Assaba region near the Senegal border, and the adjoining Brakna and Tagant regions has been signed between World Food Programme (WFP) and World Vision Mauritania. The drought relief program valued at US $5.7 million is expected to benefit at least 88,800 people who are at risk of starvation over nine months, World Vision reported on Tuesday. "The rations include cereals, beans, oil, wheat-soya blend, and sugar. This is the first time in World Vision Mauritania's 20 year history that the agency has been awarded such a large general food distribution contract from WFP," the NGO said. Mauritania lies at the epicenter of West Africa's food crisis with an estimated 420,000 people out of a total population of 2.7 million at risk of starvation. In January 2002, a freak rain storm killed nearly 120,000 cattle, sheeps and goats on which households depend between harvests. "The storm rotted already dry pasturelands and destroyed about a quarter of all harvested crops. Then, in June and July, late, low and erratic rainfall delayed the start of the cropping season, possibly for good in some areas. With farming communities across Mauritania already suffering from a poor 2001 harvest, these natural disasters drained grain reserves and forced families to skip meals to cope with the food shortages," World Vision said. Evidence of malnutrition, it added, abounds among children and adults in the form of exhaustion and weight-loss, night blindness, dehydration, diarrhoea, and hunger-related deaths. Mauritania, a largely arid country, has been hit by drought since mid-2001. In July 2002, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net) reported that rainfall had been insufficient throughout the country and that access to basic food supplies was alarmingly low. On 1 September 2002, Mauritania’s government appealed for urgent food aid in the form of 37,000 mt of cereal and 14,000 mt of complementary foodstuffs to meet the most urgent needs in 2002.