U.N. Food for Kenya Runs Low
The United Nations’ food agency will soon run out of food needed to feed about 3.5 million Kenyans facing prolonged drought because it has received a fraction of the required funding, officials said Saturday.
The World Food Program has enough cereal to last until April but will run out of other staples by month’s end, program spokesman Peter Smerdon said.
The program needs $225 million to buy more than 33,000 tons of food each month until February 2007 but has received only $28 million, he said.
“If we don’t get any more food aid it will be a catastrophe,” Smerdon said. “We are already on the edge because food is running out and we are supposed to be feeding people until February next year.”
World Food Program Executive Director James Morris arrived Saturday in El Wak, 420 miles northeast of the capital, Nairobi. Food program officials called the village an example of the effects of prolonged drought in the Horn of Africa, where 11.5 million people need food aid.
Dozens of people have died of hunger in drought-stricken parts of northeastern and eastern Kenya, according to local media. The government has declared the situation a famine and a national disaster.
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