|
|
 Millions in southern Africa are in greater danger of starvation than the international community had previously believed, according to World Vision relief experts in the region.
For more than a year, large swaths of southern Africa have faced food shortages even more severe than those in Ethiopia in the mid-1980s, when more than a million people died of hunger and related diseases. The causes of the current food shortages include climate changes, the impact of the AIDS crisis which has killed or disabled millions of farmers and political instability. However, the problem has been made worse by a lack of funding to bring in emergency food supplies, especially in the hardest-hit countries of Lesotho, Swaziland and Zimbabwe.
“We’re not getting the commitments we need from international donors,” said Rein Paulsen, World Vision’s relief manager in southern Africa. “When that happens, we run out of food – usually at the times when the hunger is at its worst.”
Working with the World Food Program, World Vision currently is providing food, as well as conducting agricultural recovery, HIV/AIDS, health and water programs for millions in Angola, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique as part of the agency’s largest emergency response.
|  |
|
