French charity airlifts emergency food to Niger
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A French charity airlifted emergency food supplies to Niger on Thursday where aid workers have been calling for months for help to save thousands of children from starving to death, a U.N. agency said.
Relief groups are beginning to expand operations in Niger to help some of the 3.6 million people facing severe food shortages, following increasingly urgent appeals from the few aid workers present since harvests failed in October.
“People are truly desperate. We need to provide as much urgent nourishment as we can to stop the appalling scenes of children slowly dying before their parents’ eyes,” said Gian Carlo Cirri, the Niger country director for the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), in a statement announcing the airlift.
Niger’s government and aid workers say donor countries could have averted the crisis by reacting to calls for help issued immediately after drought and locusts ravaged last October’s harvest.
The flight arrived at the southern town of Maradi containing 16 tonnes of cooking oil, sugar and special food for malnourished children gathered from French corporations by the charity Reunir, WFP said on behalf of the French organisation.
Another airlift is planned for the weekend to bring 40 tonnes of the staple millet and 28 tonnes of cooking oil delivered from neighbouring Chad, with the help of France, to Niger, a former French colony in West Africa.
French medical organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) has been airlifting food aid for children into Niger for the past few months, while some Arab states have also flown in relief supplies.
WFP, which along with the government of Niger is taking the lead in providing emergency food aid, says it has only received about one third of the $16 million it needs. Contributors include Italy, Britain, Germany, Luxembourg and Denmark.
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