Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2002. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - August 18, 2002
Dingilizwe Ntuli
About 13 million people in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe are threatened by starvation and the World Food Programme has warned of an increase in Aids-related deaths unless sustained food assistance is made readily available in these countries.
Judith Lewis, WFP regional director, said that while it was difficult to provide figures of people who had died as a result of starvation, she believed most Aids deaths in the region were expedited by the food shortages.
Relief agencies were now engaged in two battles - the Aids pandemic and acute food shortages - and this was likely to strain their resources.
"People suffering from Aids and other ailments like tuberculosis are succumbing to starvation because they need to have certain diets and the food shortages are compounding the situation in most of these countries.
"It's frightening as relief agencies now have to deal with Aids and the food crisis and we fear that the situation is going to worsen because food aid is taking too long to reach the poor and needy, resulting in people starving to death or dying from opportunistic diseases," said Lewis.
She said Malawi and Zambia were the worst affected by the Aids factor and that their plight was set to further deteriorate as the drought rages on.
Two million people urgently need food aid in Malawi and the WFP projects an increase to three million by March 2003 because there have been no harvests as a result of floods, while the drought means there will be no harvest again next year.
The WFP, Lewis said, would launch school feeding schemes in the worst affected districts of Malawi and strengthen the operations of existing ones to minimise disruptions.
She said Malawi urgently needed about 280 000 tons of food to avert mass starvation. Zambia requires 153 000 tons to feed about 2.3 million people, while Mozambique needs 67 000 tons for half a million people.
Lesotho needs 67 000 tons for about 450 000 people and Swaziland requires about 30 000 tons for 230 000 people.
Zimbabwe has the largest number of people in need of food relief, with about half of its 12 million population faced with starvation, provoked by the controversial land reforms. The country needs 490 000 tons of grain between now and the next harvest in March 2003.
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