1.4 million people short of food - WFP

About 1.4 Kenyans are short of food, especially in regions affected by prolonged drought, and will require about 85,000 to 90,000 mt of aid rations for six months beginning in August, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said on Thursday. Ben Watkins, a programme adviser with the WFP in Kenya, told IRIN that because of the gravity of the situation, an emergency relief operation might soon become necessary in the low-lying, drought-hit areas of Eastern Province, Coast Province and the Northeastern Province. "If our projections are correct, most of the requirements would have to be imported," Watkins said. "We would depend mainly on donor generosity," he added. He said relief agencies were already scaling up food-for-work programmes in the northwestern Turkana District and Marsabit District in the north where a combination of drought, banditry and cattle rustling had left tens of thousands of people dependent on food aid. Watkins told IRIN that the Kenya Food Security Steering Group, comprising officials from WFP, the government, the UN Children's Fund and NGOs would, starting next weekend, visit the most affected areas to assess the food situation there. After that, an inter-agency appeal for food aid could be made. On 4 June, the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS Net) reported that logistical problems had delayed the launch of relief deliveries in Turkana and Marsabit districts in May as food shortages worsened. FEWS Net said that in Turkana District, the situation was exacerbated by the premature return to the district of about 20,000 pastoralists from Uganda after they had lost some 5,000 head of livestock to raiders, rendering some of them destitute. It said that although food distribution had now started, a delay in relief distribution would deepen the effects of an already critical situation, noting that rates of child malnutrition in some areas of Turkana and Marsabit were well over the World Health Organisation's Global Acute Malnutrition Rate critical threshold of 15 percent. FEWS Net had on 11 May reported that an estimated 240,000 people in the coastal districts of Kilifi, Kwale, Malindi and Taita Taveta were experiencing food shortages as a result of successive poor harvests, rising food prices and reduced income-earning opportunities in a declining tourism sector. The start of the critical 2004 long-rains season had been poor in several coastal districts, after an uncharacteristic extension of the generally moderate short-rains season into February, according to FEWS Net. Coastal farmers, it added, had been unable to interpret the implications of the January/February rains. A significant number had opted to plant crops, most of which wilted during an extended dry spell lasting from mid-February until the first week of April.