World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

The head of the U.N.'s World Food Program agency will travel to Haiti to assess the country's needs after last week's devastating earthquake. The WFP said Wednesday that Josette Sheeran will meet with survivors and with government and relief agency officials during her two-day mission. It says Sheeran will leave for Port-au-Prince on Thursday.

Mr. DAVID ORR (UN World Food Program): We estimate that we've reached about 133,000 beneficiaries with some 880,000 rations. A ration is enough food for one person to last a day. And we're distributing mostly high-energy biscuits. These are fortified biscuits, and we have been distributing rice, pulses, oil and salt. Yesterday alone, we estimate we reached 95,000 beneficiaries in various locations in and around Port-au-Prince.

A further 43 tonnes of food were due to be flown in yesterday according to Josette Sheeran, the WFP's executive director. "In comparison to the other major natural disasters of this scale that we've handled, we are moving at pace. The unique dimension here was the devastation not only to the people and government and ports but also to the humanitarian agencies," she said. "We have seen a dramatic improvement in the efficiency and co-ordination of the flow of goods coming in and a prioritisation of those."

The head of a U.N. food agency says the United Nations has reached an agreement with the U.S.-run airport in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince to give humanitarian flights priority in landing. World Food Program executive director Josette Sheeran says an air slot system, similar to one used during the Indonesian tsunami emergency, has been established to ensure that aid flights get priority in landing.

The staggering scope of Haiti’s nightmare came into sharper focus yesterday as authorities estimated 200,000 dead and 1.5 million homeless in the heart of this luckless land (..) The delays aren’t “so much about food supplies as logistics,’’ said Brian Feagans, a spokesman for the aid group CARE. The priorities are clearing roads, ensuring security at UN food distribution points, getting this city’s seaport working again, and bringing in more trucks and helicopters, WFP executive director Josette Sheeran said in Rome.

David Orr, of the World Food Programme, told Jon Snow: “We’re not just using this airport to bring in assets. “We’re bringing in food supplies by road along the humanitarian corridor from the Dominican Republic. Also by sea.” “So we’re moving huge resources from a number of different directions, at top speed.” He went on: “We’re targeting a total of 2 million (people in need) – that’s our estimate.

International aid is not about making miracles happen. It is about the attempted delivery of life-saving and livelihood-restoring assistance to people in dire conditions, in ways that are equitable, impartial and according to needs. The international humanitarian system does this job reasonably well, and is slowly getting better, as a forthcoming ALNAP report, The State of the Humanitarian System, highlights.

Food rations provided by the United Nations and humanitarian organizations reached Challe, a camp for 10,000 displaced Haitian people, for the first time as relief supplies began to trickle in to those in need. (..) The supplies were brought in by the World Food Program (WFP) on a truck accompanied by Argentine soldiers that form part of UN forces deployed here. (..)"This is the first time food is being distributed in this camp that houses 10,000 people," explained Josephine Florent, who sported a white T-shirt emblazoned with a WFP logo, as she distributed the biscuits.

The immense scale of the earthquake devastation outside Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, is becoming clearer. (..)"It's the very epicentre of the earthquake, and many, many thousands are dead," said World Food Program (WFP) spokesman David Orr. "Nearly every house was destroyed here. The military are talking about 20,000 to 30,000 dead," he said.

Haitians bereft of homes and loved ones held Sunday prayers in the streets of their earthquake-ravaged capital while rescue workers continued digging in the ruins for something like a miracle. (..) The U.N. peacekeeping mission, the World Food Program, Oxfam and International Committee of the Red Cross were all more visible than they had been in recent days.