World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

Niamey With the unloading this week of the first in a series of 10 airlifts of emergency food aid to Niger, WFP has moved into the most critical phase of its emergency operation to feed 2.5 million people who are caught in the grip of severe food shortages.

Dakar - WFP has announced plans to almost triple the number of people being fed through its Niger emergency operation to over a million, as the annual \'hunger season\' takes a firm and distressing grip on one of the world\'s poorest countries.

WFP warns that unless the international community renews its commitment to deal with the consequences of this year’s food crisis in Niger, the country faces a second successive year of extreme suffering.

As the world focuses on a series of massive natural disasters and the spread of avian influenza, hunger in Africa has quietly climbed to an all-time high, threatening to destabilize much of the continent, warns James T. Morris, Executive Director of WFP.

Speaking on the occasion of World Food Day on 16 October, the Executive Director of WFP, James Morris, said that by the end of the day 6,241,512 people will have already died of hunger and related diseases so far this year

Brussels - WFP welcomes a cash donation of five million euros from Belgium which will allow the agency to provide urgently needed food to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Niger, Mali, South Sudan, Zimbabwe and Malawi.