RAIN ADDS TO MALAWI’S FOOD SECURITY WOES

RAIN ADDS TO MALAWI ’S FOOD SECURITY WOES

NEW YORK, 11 January (OCHA) -- Heavy rains and strong winds have damaged houses, crops and livestock across Malawi in recent weeks.  The rainfall and concomitant rising river levels, which peaked over Near Year’s weekend, have affected some 20,000 households in two southern districts -- Chikwawa and Nsanje -- primarily through the loss of crops planted for the 2005/2006 harvest.  Residents of both districts were already receiving food assistance due to the poor 2004/2005 harvest.

The toll of this flooding thus exacerbates an already precarious situation.  Across Malawi, the national food security situation continues to worsen.  In August 2005, the United Nations and the Government declared that 4.2 million people would require food assistance through March 2006; by the end of November, that figure had risen to just over 5 million.

To provide assistance to those newly identified as requiring assistance, the United Nations will require an additional 52,700 metric tonnes of food over the 202,000 metric tonnes originally programmed in the Appeal.  And while the World Food Programme (WFP) is continuing to support the Government’s voucher scheme, the general food crisis in the southern African region and obstacles to transport are creating major challenges to getting food assistance into the country.

The Malawi Integrated Nutrition and Food Security Surveillance System’s most recent report shows that rates of acute malnutrition among children under five have been on the rise across the country.  Moderate and severe malnutrition nationwide increased from 7.6 per cent in October 2005 to 13.1 per cent in November.  According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and its non-governmental partners, admissions of severely malnourished children to 48 Nutrition Rehabilitation Units (NRUs) in November showed a 17 per cent increase nationwide compared to the same period in 2004, with the highest increase in the southern region at 45 per cent.  The increase in the number of admissions in November over October was 30 per cent nationwide.

There has been an increasing in wasting -- a measurement of acute malnutrition -- in all regions of the country.  In the southern region, 11.6 per cent of children are wasted compared to 9 per cent last year; in the central region, there has been a 4.3 per cent increase in wasting to 9.1 per cent of children; and in the northern region, the rate of wasting among children -- 6.3 per cent -- represents an increase of 1 per cent over last year.

The UNICEF continues to support 62 NRUs throughout Malawi, and is in the process of equipping a further 35 units.  A joint WFP/UNICEF mission to prepare  to scale up the supplementary feeding programme (SFP) has been completed, and 17 priority districts have been identified for the first phase of the expanded SFP, in which 100,000 moderately malnourished children and pregnant and lactating women will be targeted.  The WFP has almost doubled the outreach of its school feeding programme and is now reaching more than 400,000 children in seven districts.

The UNICEF has also been active in supporting community mobilization through the training of health workers in response to an outbreak of cholera in the country.  Since the beginning of October, more than 400 cases of the disease have been reported.

While much of the assistance needs in response to the recent rains have been met by the Government and United Nations system, resource gaps continue to hamper implementation of aid programmes included in the Flash Appeal for Malawi.  On 30 August 2005, the United Nations launched a six-month Flash Appeal for Malawi, which calls for $74 million for food and nutritional assistance to support national food distribution and voucher schemes and cash interventions, and to support subsidization of seed and fertilizers for small farmers before the 2005/2006 planting season.  More than two thirds of the way through the Appeal, just over $41 million has been received to date – or 56 per cent of what is needed

For further information, please call:  Stephanie Bunker of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)- New York, tel: 1-917-367-5126, mobile: 1-917-892-1679; Kristen Knudson, OCHA- New York, tel: 1-917-367-9262; Elisabeth Byrs, OCHA-Geneva, tel: 41-22-917-2653, mobile: 41-79-473-4570.

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For information media • not an official record