The United Nations’s World Food Programme (WFP) said on Wednesday it would feed in coming months more than a half million people in northern Burundi, where famine has claimed about 100 lives since November.
The operation is aimed at tens of thousands of families in the Kirundo and Muyinga provinces where harvests were poor last year, the agency said in a statement released in Nairobi.
”To address this crisis, WFP will assist at least 520 000 people in the provinces of Kirundo and Muyinga,” the agency said.
About 80% of the population of Kirundo are threatened by famine, as are about 50 percent of the population in Muyinga, according to local authorities.
The population of Kirundo is around 600 00 while that of Muyinga is 350 000. About 100 people have died from hunger in the two provinces in the last two months, authorities said last week.
Last year, the WFP distributed food worth $4,5-million to drought-hit regions in the tiny central African nation that has been wracked by war and instability for more than a decade.
The agency said it had enough funds to assist famine-stricken people for the next five months but noted that an additional $25-million would be required to sustain the feeding programme from June to December. – Sapa-AFP