Teso food aid delayed by assessment difficulties - WFP

The World Food Programme (WFP) has said that delays in the distribution of urgently needed food in eastern Uganda’s Teso region were caused by difficulties in assessing the numbers of displaced people. "Our food distribution programmes have definitely been delayed by a lack of accurate figures on the numbers of displaced and the difficulty of tracking exactly where they have settled," WFP national programme officer Ernest Mutanga told IRIN. Since the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebel group made its unprecedented incursion into eastern Uganda on 15 June, some 240,000 people are estimated to have been displaced in Teso region, including 150,000 in Katakwi district. WFP is to mobilise about 2,700 mt of food for the displaced next week. The food is to be distributed by local and international NGOs. People in and around Soroti town in Teso told IRIN that hunger was reaching a critical stage, with a number of children dying from hunger or hunger-related illnesses. "The majority of the people here are subsistence farmers," said David Oonya, one of the IPDs camping in Soroti secondary school. "Obviously they can’t go back, so a lot of them have been reduced to beggars on the streets. Many don’t eat for days on end." "I have seen some few children die of starvation," he told IRIN, "but hunger has made them weak to diseases." [see IRIN Web Special on Uganda]