World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and the United States Embassy in Vientiane have jointly visited Laos's northern province of Luangnamtha on March 5- 7 in an effort to explore ways to strengthen activities designed for helping the Lao Government reduce malnutrition. WFP Country Director and Representative Eri Kudo and US Ambassador Karen B. Stewart visited areas where nutrition programmes focusing on the first 1,000 days of a child's life - the period when a well-balanced and complete diet is most essential to healthy development - are being implemented. (..) "Preventing malnutrition in Laos today will boost the progress this country can make tomorrow," said Kudo.

The worst floods in more than a decade along Southeast Asia’s Mekong River has left nearly 200 people dead, destroyed vast tracts of farmland and fishponds and sent tens of thousands of people fleeing from their homes. (..) Eri Kudo, the World Food Program’s Representative to Laos, said a large number of communities across the flood-stricken Khammuane province had lost their 2010 harvest in flash floods.

(..) Watson, Young Australian of the Year, has just returned from Laos as part of the United Nations World Food Program (WFP). In her role as youth representative for WFP, Watson and her manager, Manly Cricket Club president Andrew Fraser, travelled to the southern Saravane region of Laos where they played with school children and took part in meal preparation at the schools.

Record-breaking sailor and Young Australian of the Year Jessica Watson today announced her support for the United Nations World Food Programme’s (WFP) School Meals Programme in Laos, in her role as a Youth Representative for WFP.

The Korean government has decided to provide USD 300,000 to Laos, where some 40 percent of the children are suffering from chronic undernutrition, through the World Food Programme.

The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) has launched the first ship with a regular schedule to ferry relief supplies and aid workers from the Libyan city of Benghazi to Misrata, which has seen some of the heaviest fighting since an uprising broke out in the North African country four months ago.

More than 37,000 people in five provinces in Laos received donations of rice and vegetable oil from the World Food Program (WFP) through the United States Embassy to Laos to cover their basic nutritional needs ahead of the next harvest.

The health and nutrition of mothers, babies and young children in remote areas will receive a major boost thanks to the launch of the joint Ministry of Health - United Nation (UN) Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health and Nutrition programme in Savannakhet, Phongsaly, Luangnamtha and Oudomsay in Laos, Lao News Agency (KPL) reported. In a meeting to launch the programme in late May, senior representatives of the Ministry of Health at the central level and from the three provinces were joined by senior representatives from (..) the World Food Programme, and the World Health Organisation.

Two UN aid agencies are calling for emergency food assistance for more than 111,000 people in Laos facing a shortage of their staple crop, rice. The Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme said Tuesday that residents of central and southern Laos require immediate support from outside to tide them over until the main wet season rice harvest in October 2011.

US Ambassador to Laos, Karen Brevard Stewart, participated in a hand-over ceremony of more than 1,000 metric tonnes of food in support of Phase Three of the Safe Education Opportunities Project (..). A team from the USDA was in Laos in February to monitor the progress of the McGovern-Dole International Food For Education and Child Nutrition funded programmes implemented by the World Food Programme (WFP) and HDI/IRD.