Aid agencies assessment to verify govt hunger figures

The World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday it was unable to endorse a government statement that 3.5 million Malawians were in need of food aid. WFP spokeswoman Antonella D'aprile told IRIN that a food security assessment would have to be conducted to verify the number of people in need of assistance. Vice President Chakufwa Chihana appealed on Thursday for urgent international assistance to help feed more than 3.5 million people, Associated Press reported. Chihana, who is also minister of agriculture, was quoted as saying that "32 percent of Malawians, most of them in the southern region, have already run out of food. Government will do all it can to prevent starvation, but we need urgent assistance from our cooperating partners". However, D'aprile said "WFP's stand regarding this declaration is that we cannot endorse the figure because there have not been [vulnerability] assessments. What WFP decided, just this morning, is that we will be going to the field to do a food security assessment, together with FEWS NET [Famine Early Warning Systems Network] and other NGOs, in the coming two weeks to assess the situation." The aid agency has been conducting emergency operations in the country since harvests failed in 2001/02. D'aprile noted that the rainfall pattern had "not been good". The latest meteorological institute bulletin showed that rainfall in the south of the country was 50 percent below normal. "So there might be a drought situation in the south, and some areas of the central and northern regions. But we have not had an assessment, so we cannot quantify the number of people who are in need of food aid." WFP, together with other partners and UN agencies, recognised "that there is a problem because of the lack of rains. We know already also that it's especially concentrated in the south, and we are already running an emergency operation. The field assessments will help us to retarget emergency assistance," D'aprile confirmed. WFP currently expects to feed about 676,000 people during the first three months of the year, in the peak of what is known as the "lean season".