Food distributed to nearly 1.5 million in May

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) provided food to nearly 1.5 million beneficiaries throughout Sudan in May to prepare for the beginning of the “most difficult” stretch of the “traditional hunger gap” period, WFP’s latest weekly emergency report said. The report said June marked the beginning of the period when the food supply was low and WFP-assisted beneficiaries were “most vulnerable.” Overall nutritional conditions “continued to improve” in many areas, except for the Aweil area of Bahr el Ghazal where a recent nutritional survey indicated that the situation remained of “concern,” the report said. The area also continued to receive new internally displaced persons (IDPs) on a daily basis. “In May, some 20,000 IDPs arrived in Aweil East County, further straining the local food situation,” the report said. Several NGOs continued to support supplementary and therapeutic feeding programmes in the area to avert a further deterioration of the situation, it added.