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WFP food aid target for Zambian HIV/AIDS victims

Pays
Zambie
Sources
Reuters
Date de publication

By Shapi Shacinda

LUSAKA, June 11 (Reuters) - Victims of the HIV/AIDS pandemic are among 2.5 million Zambians targeted for food relief starting next month, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday.

WFP country representative for Zambia Richard Ragan told Reuters by telephone from Johannesburg that 200,000 tonnes of food would be distributed between July 1 and end-March 2003.

The WFP and other aid organisations met donors in Johannesburg last week to tackle the worst food shortage for a decade in six southern African nations.

The WFP estimates some 13 million people will need 1.2 million tonnes of food over nine months in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique, Lesotho and Swaziland -- countries where food output has been slashed by adverse weather and in some cases by political mismanagement.

The WFP will feed 2.3 million people in Zambia's rural areas and 185,000 more in urban areas, Ragan said, adding these were people too poor to buy maize in this southern Africa country of 11 million people.

"We are not trying to stigmatise HIV and AIDS (sufferers) but we reckon people infected and those affected will be the most hit by the food shortage," Ragan said.

The WFP will target street children and orphans whose parents died of AIDS, he said.

One in five adult Zambians has HIV or lives with AIDS and more than 800,000 children have been orphaned by AIDS.

Capricious weather in Zambia cut the country's food output to 490,000 tonnes from 700,000 tonnes in the 2000/2001 season. Drought compounded the problem during 2001/2002.

Zambian President Levy Mwanwasa declared a national food disaster in May, saying four million Zambians faced starvation.

Ragan said a WFP and U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation assessment in rural parts of Zambia showed peasant farmers were hardest hit by drought, and the number could rise.

"There is no social safety net to support peasant farmers and vulnerable children. That is why we will concentrate on the remote parts," Ragan said.

Between 78 percent and 85 percent Zambians live below the World Bank poverty threshold of $1 per day.

Ragan said the WFP would distribute a blend of fortified energy cereals and maize.