WFP distributes food to health centres, HIV-infected

HIV-infected and affected people as well as health and nutritional centres in the Central African Republic have started receiving relief aid from the UN World Food Programme, a senior official told PlusNews on Tuesday. The WFP representative in the country, David Bulman, said in the capital, Bangui, that the agency started the distribution of food on Friday to selected health centres in Bangui; to Bouar, 454 km to the northwest; to Bambari, 385 km northeast of Bangui; and to the southwestern province of Lobaye. Facilities caring for nursing and pregnant mothers as well as children with nutritional problems are among the beneficiaries. Deliveries consist of maize flour, soya-corn blended flour, oil, sugar and salt. At least 11,000 people are to benefit from these deliveries expected to last until November, when another distribution will be organised. "Each centre is receiving about five metric tons," Bulman said. This is the first large-scale food distribution organised in the country since the 15 March coup that brought Francois Bozize to power. At that time, 1,800 mt of food were looted from the WFP's Bangui warehouses. As a result, the agency suspended food delivery into the country until July, when a new warehouse was provided in a safer part of the city. Since then, trucks loaded with food have now been reaching Bangui from neighbouring Cameroon. Bulman said distribution to schools would start on Saturday, beginning with those in Bossangoa, 305 km north of Bangui. He added that WFP, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the government were considering how to organise food distributions in the coming weeks to refugee returnees. In June, the UNHCR repatriated at least 2,000 CAR refugees from neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo. Bulman said the returnees would receive rations for three months.