World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

ANTANANARIVO - The World Food Programme in Madagascar issued an alert today, warning that it has been unable to pre-position sufficient quantities of relief food in critical cyclone-prone zones ahead of the cyclone season due to a lack of donor funding.

KUALA LUMPUR – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is grateful to the Naza Group of Companies for its support to the organisation’s nutrition work targeting mothers and their young children in Asia, as well as to the “One Child. One Life. One Chance” fundraising campaign, endorsed by WFP’s Malaysian celebrity advocate Marion Caunter.

FAO has called for a renewed commitment to guarantee the right to food for the world's hundreds of millions of hungry people.

Read UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon message to mark World Food Day, which this year promotes the Right to Food.

Floods across southern Africa are wreaking havoc for tens of thousands of people caught by rising water that has washed away crops, homes and claimed the lives of dozens of people, WFP has said.

WFP has expressed deep concern over erratic weather patterns in southern Africa which have devastated harvest prospects for millions of people, and could spell yet another year of widespread food shortages.

WFP has said it had started flying desperately needed food and other humanitarian supplies by helicopter to 20,000 people in northwestern Madagascar isolated after one of the worst cyclone seasons in years.

WFP has welcomed a donation of US$800,000 from the Norwegian Government to ensure that food assistance reaches tens of thousands of people hit by a series of cyclones and storms over the past three months – including the latest, Indlala, which struck the northeast last Thursday.

WFP has said a WFP-chartered helicopter had started rescue and food delivery missions in central Mozambique where the worst flooding in years has forced an estimated 85,000 people to flee their homes.

Johannesburg WFP starts sending supplies of emergency rice to immediately assist thousands of people affected by Cyclone Ernest and the ensuing tropical storm that has struck south west Madagascar.