Isolated communities in urgent need of aid

Thousands of hungry and sick people in previously inaccessible areas of Angola cut off by fighting are being found by newly-launched humanitarian assessment missions, aid organisations have warned.

The international medical aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said there were "enormous humanitarian needs" in the so-called "grey zones" which, until a recent ceasefire between government and UNITA rebel forces, had been isolated from relief supplies for many years.

An MSF statement on Wednesday said that one of their teams found "extremely high mortality rates" in Bunjei, 116 km from Caala in the southern province of Huila when they arrived last week.

Thierry Allfort-Duverger, who led the assessment team, was quoted as saying: "We counted 14 deaths per day over a population of around 14,000 in Bunjei. We found more than 1,050 freshly dug graves. Bunjei is a ghost town where displaced and destitute people have been settling since last September."

Thirty percent of the children examined were severely malnourished and were admitted to emergency therapeutic feeding centres. MSF also opened a nutritional centre for children suffering from moderate malnutrition and has started distributing food and drinking water to 3,500 children below the age of 10.

The World Food Programme (WFP) said it was working closely with MSF-France to deliver food as soon as possible, but the poor road conditions would be a "major constraint" in their ability to supply Bunjei.

A second MSF assessment showed an equally alarming situation in Chilembo, south of Huambo, MSF said. A basic nutritional survey of 1,219 children showed that 42 percent of them are malnourished with 10 percent suffering from severe malnutrition. An emergency therapeutic feeding centre and a "soup kitchen" are being set up for the 6,000 uprooted people in the area.

"The levels of malnutrition in these two areas are extremely worrying and require an urgent general food distribution. MSF is continuing its assessments of the newly-accessible areas and is very concerned that the situation may be equally bad elsewhere. If this is the case, significant humanitarian assistance will be required," the relief agency said.

Based on local information from churches and displaced people, the humanitarian community last year drew up a list of 36 inaccessible locations in 13 provinces where needs were believed to be critical. They were mainly concentration points for people that had been forced from their homes by the fighting. Two more localities have since been added to the list.

Since 18 April, 13 rapid assessment missions by UN agencies, their humanitarian partners and the government have been undertaken. The process is expected to be concluded by the first week of May. It is estimated that 500,000 previously isolated people are in need.

"It is important for us to get the information and process it quickly, which we are doing, and prioritise interventions in those areas," Julie Thomson, information officer for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told IRIN on Thursday.

She said health and nutrition assistance would be important, but not all those in need would necessarily require general feeding programmes. Thomson added that the assessments taking place would create the basis for a mid-term review of a consolidated donor appeal.

WFP said in its latest situation report this week that it forecast shortfalls in the availability of food commodities starting in June. The last confirmed contributions are only expected to start arriving in Angola in August-September.

The food agency said donor contributions were urgently needed, "in order to cover the expected increase [in the] caseload in the upcoming months as a result of the new political scenario".