World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

It has been almost one year since the massive earthquake struck Haiti. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) just issued a series of reports highlighting its relief to reconstruction efforts in Haiti. This first report focuses on child nutrition.

UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos will visit Haiti on Tuesday and Wednesday to review the humanitarian response to the recent cholera outbreak in the small island country (..). The World Food Program (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have been able to restart their operations in the northern city Cap Haitian, where the situation has calmed down.

With a UN envoy urging an end to protests in earthquake-ravaged Haiti, underdog presidential candidates have called for an election delay to focus on a cholera epidemic that has claimed nearly 1,200 lives. (..)The unrest is preventing the UN's World Food Program from providing daily hot meals to 190,000 children in schools in Cap Haitien in the north-east, officials said.

Hurricane Tomas weakened to a tropical storm on Saturday after it lashed Haiti's crowded camps for earthquake survivors and coastal towns, triggering flooding and mudslides that killed at least seven people. (..) The World Food Program had stockpiled enough supplies to feed more than 1 million people for six weeks, said Mark Ward, director of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance at the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Tomas may have been downgraded to a tropical depression but it may yet restrengthen to a hurricane by Friday — just in time to strike Haiti. (..) The World Food Program pre-positioned food supplies in 32 locations across the country to feed 1.1 million Haitians for six weeks. Meanwhile, the U.S.S. Iwo Jima is in transit to assist with transporting supplies and medical relief.

The Haitian government, humanitarian agencies and the UN mission in Haiti are teaming up in response to approaching Hurricane Tomas, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said on Monday. (..) Currently food supplies sufficient to feed 1.1 million Haitians for six weeks are pre-positioned in the most vulnerable areas across the country by the World Food Program.

In a bustling street of a downtown area, a police constable sells lemon juice outside a private hospital when he is off-duty and in his normal clothes. (..) A recent report jointly published by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and World Food Programme provides further evidence to the increasing levels of poverty in the country. (..) The study links several recent incidents of violence to the food crisis, including the 2009 bombing of a World Food Programme office in Islamabad.

The spread of the cholera outbreak in Haiti is beginning to slow down, even as humanitarian agencies continue to step up treatment and preventive measures(...)The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has commenced the distribution of ready-to-eat meals as well as high energy biscuits to hospitals in affected areas, in en effort to ensure people do not eat food that could have been cooked with contaminated water.

Nine months after a huge earthquake devastated Haiti, destroying 80% of schools in and around its capital, teachers and aid workers have hit on a healthy way to get children back to class: serve them a hot meal. (..) About 1,400 children from the slums attend the school, and providing them with one square meal a day is a relief for mothers who can not always provide for their children, said the principal as she oversaw delivery of a truckload of aid from the UN's World Food Programme (WFP). (..) "Together with the school meals program of the government, we are targeting more than one million children this year," said Anne Poulsen, a WFP spokeswoman.

As winter approaches on Pakistan's flooded southern plains, thousands of malnourished children are living in dirty, spartan tents without prospect of a home, officials and UN workers say. (..) As the season cools and winter rains arrive, UN officials at the World Food Programme said that stockpiling food is an urgent issue."Rapid assessments of nutritional status and clinical observations strongly suggest that rates of acute malnutrition are rising," said WFP spokeswoman Jackie Dent.