Hunger kills 20 in Karuzi, parliamentarians say

At least 20 people have died of hunger in Burundi's east-central province of Karuzi, a group of parliamentarians from the province said on Wednesday following a visit to the area. One of the Members of Parliament (MP), Tharcisse Minani, said hunger "was raging in the three communes Gihogazi, Buhiga and Gitaramuka." "There is a risk that it will spread if nothing is done," he said. He added that witnesses had told them that the hunger crisis did not encompass the entire province. The death count was made before 12 February. Minani blamed the food shortage on low crop yields following poor rainfalls. The MPs appealed to the government, NGOs and UN agencies to provide food aid for the hungry and asked for the distribution of seeds for the second planting season. An assistant information officer for the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in Burundi, Isidore Nteturuye, could not confirm whether the deaths were caused by hunger. He told IRIN on Thursday that Karuzi was a "zone where malaria is endemic". It is also a region subject to food insecurity since 1999, he said. People weakened by lack of food succumb more easily to malaria. He said WFP was distributing food aid regularly in the area and that "almost all the WFP programmes are represented there". They include "targeted distribution to vulnerable families, food-for-work- and school feeding programmes, nutritional feeding centres and seed protection rations". Seed protection programmes, aimed at preventing farmers from eating their seeds by giving them food rations, were conducted twice yearly and had just taken place recently, Nteturuye said. The Burundi news agency, ABP, reported on Wednesday that about 30 youths left Gasorwe in the northeastern province of Muyinga for Rwanda, apparently for lack of food in their homes. Administration officials in Gasorwe were quoted as saying that poverty and hunger might be behind their departure. Food shortages as a result of poor rainfalls followed by an early dry season had also been reported in the provinces of Cankuzo in the east, Kirundo, Muyinga and Ngozi in the north.