Warning that food aid could run out within a month

Food aid in drought-stricken Ethiopia could run out within a month, the US government’s Famine Early Warning System (FEWS NET) warned on Tuesday. It said that unless food starts arriving in the country, critically low supplies will be exhausted in March and desperately needed deliveries will grind to a halt. So far the international community has pledged just over half of the food aid needed for some 11 million people facing starvation in one of the worst-ever droughts to hit the country. Some 771,000 mt of food have been pledged out of 1.4 million needed. “Food aid pledges need to translate into actual deliveries quickly or food aid distributions will be halted altogether as early as March,” FEWS said. “On-going food aid distributions have to be scaled up in the coming months in order to reduce consistently high levels of malnutrition.” “Most importantly, additional pledges to meet the needs of supplementary feeding programmes are urgently required to prevent a further deterioration in nutritional status and increased mortality,” it added.