WFP airlifts 400 tonnes of food for malnourished kids

The UN World Food Programme said on Monday it had begun flying 400 tonnes of corn soya blend and sugar into the Liberian capital Monrovia to meet the immediate needs of an emergency feeding programme for 50,000 malnourished children. WFP spokesman Ramin Rafirasme said a chartered Antonov AN-12 cargo plane began ferrying the specialist food supplies into Monrovia from Conakry, the capital of Guinea on Saturday. It would make two flights per day until the entire consignment was delivered towards the end of this week, he told IRIN. Speaking by telephone from Dakar, Rafirasme told IRIN that the corn soya blend and sugar would be supplied to feeding centres in Monrovia run Action Against Hunger until more supplies could be brought in by ship. "This is going to be a costly operation of course, but there is no other way we are going to be able to save those kids," he said. A screening of more than 6,000 children under five in camps for displaced people carried out by Action Against Hunger in July suggested that about 30 percent were accutely malnourished. A survey of 2,000 displaced children carried out by World Vision over roughly the same period suggested an accute malnutrition rate of nearly 40 percent. A WFP ship carrying 2,300 tonnes of emergency food supplies arrived in Monrovia last week. Rafirasme said the next WFP supply ship was due to arrive in the second week of September. The organisation aims to distribute 9,000 tonnes per month to 500,000 needy people in Liberia, which has a total population of about three million.