WFP concerned over lack of access

The United Nations' World Food Programme expressed "major concern" on Friday over lack of access to people trapped in areas of conflict or close to military front lines in Liberia. The WFP West Africa Regional Office, said most of the people were staying with relatives in towns and villages, or hiding in the bush, and "may soon" exhaust their means of survival. "Any break in WFP food pipeline would mean a disaster for the thousands [of] people we are feeding today," the agency warned in an update on the humanitarian situation in Liberia. "The numbers of people in need are going up by day," the office located in Dakar, Senegal added. WFP noted that thousands of people had abandoned the town of Tubmanburg and now it had a population of 5,000 to 6,000, compared to between 20,000 and 30,000 before the war. Many who had fled Tubmanburg had gone to the Liberian capital, Monrovia, and were either staying with relatives or in abandoned buildings, the agency said. The number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in camps in and around the capital was continuing to increase, but the new arrivals were not all arriving directly from the areas affected by intense fighting, the report said. The number of IDPs in the camps was also rising as people in Monrovia found it gradually more difficult to sustain themselves in town and moved to the camps, where assistance was being provided, it noted. "Should this movement intensify, it might result in a dramatic increase of the number of people to be fed, which is a very worrying prospect," WFP stated. These people were moving into camps to get assistance because poverty was extremely high and increasing, it said. An estimated 80 percent of the population live below the poverty line of US $1 per day, and severe poverty was estimated at 52 percent, it added. Other people were being tempted to register, obtain ration cards and build shelters in the IDP camps (located an average distance of 10 km from Monrovia), but continue to live in town. "Most of the households in Monrovia host a great number of displaced [people] and may soon exhaust available resources," the report warned. In a separate development, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said it has received reports of 661 cases of cholera in Montserado County, as of 1 September. Officials of the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare have met with WHO, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF - Belgium) and other nongovernmental organisations to discuss measures to contain the outbreak, according to a WHO statement. A team from the Ministry of Health and WHO had assessed the epidemiological situation in the county, including in IDP camps and recommended chlorinating water in and around Monrovia, and in the IDP camps, as well as community-based health promotion activities in the affected areas.