WFP to provide emergency food aid

In response to what WFP described as “one of the worst natural disasters on record” to hit Malawi, the UN agency announced on Friday that it would start emergency food distributions at the weekend to some 60,000 people stranded by torrential floods.

“Tens of thousands of people who have fled to higher and dryer ground have only managed to take enough food to sustain them for a few days,” Adama Diop-Faye, WFP Country Director for Malawi said in a statement. “The number of Malawians displaced by the floods pounding the region is growing every day and we are moving in food as quickly as possible to prevent a humanitarian disaster.”

WFP food assessment teams to the four most-affected districts of Nsanje and Chikwawa in the south, and Salima and Nkhotakota in central Malawi, reported that nearly 280,000 people have been negatively affected by the floods in one way or another in these four districts alone. Thirteen districts have been affected to some extent throughout the country.

While the Malawian government has been feeding flood victims through its Department of Disaster Preparedness Relief and Rehabilitation, its food stocks are running out, WFP said. Malawi has appealed to the donor community for US $6.7 million in relief aid to assist 360,000 people countrywide.

WFP has stepped in at the request of the Malawian government by borrowing some 560 mt of food from other programs in country to feed the most needy 60,000 flood victims in Nsanje, Chikwawa and Salima districts, the statement said. “The WFP immediate relief assistance, worth some US $180,000, will feed families for some three to four weeks while an expanded emergency flood operation is being prepared for the medium-term,” it added.