Urgent appeal for two million Sudanese facing starvation

Nearly two million Sudanese could face starvation if food stocks are not replenished by June, WFP warned in a statement released from Khartoum on Thursday. The statement said there was an urgent need for pledges of food aid to avert a crisis. It warned existing stocks would run out in June. "Current stocks will finish at precisely the same time they are needed most, at the peak of the hunger months which last from April until October," the statement said. Dwindling food stocks have forced WFP to
reduce essential therapeutic and supplementary feeding programmes for the malnourished. Rations to other vulnerable people have already been halved. Only 11,300 mt of food had been donated out of an appeal for 55,000 mt issued in January, said WFP.

In government-held areas of Eastern Equatoria, 228,000 people are said to be at risk of starvation in the towns of Torit and Kapoeta because of drought. A further 16,365 people in the northern province of Halaib on the Red Sea are similarly affected by a three year drought, the DPA news agency reported.