Economic woes, poor rainfall worsen crisis, OCHA

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has highlighted the impact of foreign currency shortages and a lack of rain on relief efforts in Zimbabwe. "The United Nations is receiving an increasing number of reports of hunger-related deaths, and of children and adults fainting from hunger. Economic woes, especially the severe foreign currency shortage, and the ongoing shortages of fuel and fertiliser compound the shortages of food," an OCHA statement said. The office pointed to a warning by the Southern African Development Community's Drought Monitoring Centre which suggests that the rainfall situation could deteriorate further and called for contingency plans to be made. Poor rainfall, especially in the south, is forecast to continue throughout the remainder of the 2002/2003 rainy season. "Worsening conditions in Zimbabwe have led the World Food Programme (WFP) to step up its food distribution there this month. Improvements in WFP's capacity and pipeline have allowed the agency to deliver as much as 47,000 mt of food in January, more than double the previous highest distribution level," OCHA noted. "But ongoing shortages of fuel, fertiliser and rain, together with setbacks in the health sector, imply that needs will continue to grow," the office warned. Foreign currency shortages left the government unable to buy much-needed vaccines, while fuel shortages made it difficult to distribute them at sub-district level. "So severe are the problems that the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare foresee a possible collapse of Expanded Programme of Immunisation (EPI) services in the next three months, if no interventions are undertaken immediately," OCHA added. UNICEF was therefore looking for ways to source vaccines rapidly from other UNICEF offices in the region with surplus stock. "The WHO and UNICEF have also agreed to share costs for an experienced logistician to be based with the Zimbabwean Ministry of Health. Further complicating problems in the health sector, reports of malaria increased by 19 percent in the last week of December, while it was difficult to transport medicines from the national to regional level," OCHA said. UN humanitarian agencies were urgently in need of resources from donors that would allow for the purchase of further resources. "Though the overall level of funding for the UN Consolidated Inter-Agency Appeal for the Humanitarian Crisis in Southern Africa stands at 58 percent, contributions for programmes outside the food sector have been poor. As of 24 January, just 12 per cent of the funding required for health sector interventions had been received. Interventions for water and sanitation have received only 13 percent of the funding that agencies had requested in July," the office warned.