UNITED NATIONS, Dec 3 (AFP) - The World Food Programme called Tuesday for "a massive infusion of funds" to save 38 million people from starvation in Africa, saying food aid was also a crucial part of the fight against the AIDS epidemic.
Parents would send their children to school if a meal was available, WFP director James Morris told a public meeting of the UN Security Council, adding:
"The school experience is fundamental to getting at the HIV/AIDS issue, because education will be the only opportunity they have to think about alternative lifestyles."
The spread of HIV/AIDS -- which has killed 42 million people and is known to have infected another 40 million, two-thirds of them in Africa -- was the major difference between famines of the past and those of today, Morris said.
"In modern time, we have never before seen a disease with the capacity to cause large-scale social breakdown," he said, adding that more than seven million agricultural workers had died in Africa since 1985.
The crisis was exacerbated by widespread drought and by massive demands on WFP's resources from other parts of the world, including Afghanistan and North Korea, Morris said.
"The magnitude of the disaster unfolding in Africa has not yet been fully grasped by the international community," he said.
A fact sheet distributed to council members showed that, as of this month, 38.3 million people were at risk of starving in Africa, 17.9 million of them in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan. Another 16.4 million were threatened in seven southern African countries including Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia, and 2.7 million in the Great Lakes region.
"The severity of the current food crisis is certainly on a scale that threatens political stability and security," Morris said.
Mass starvation was not inevitable if African governments and donor countries made the right political choices, he went on.
Global food aid had fallen from 15 million tonnes to 11 million tonnes over the past three years, he said, and "more funds are crucial."
The WFP was far too dependent on the United States, which provided 62 percent of all food aid worldwide last year, he added. He called on other donors to make a political commitment to allow WFP to diversify its sources, and urged African governments to drop their refusal to accept genetically modified grain from the United States.
Morris also called on more donors to invest in agriculture in the Third World, and on African governments to free up the private sector.
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