WFP urges more food aid for hungry Zimbabweans
Date: 09-Sep-02
Country: ZIMBABWE
Author: Stella Mapenzauswa
Morris spoke after visiting the main government hospital in the town of Bindura, 90 km (55 miles) northeast of the capital Harare, where scores of malnourished children are receiving treatment.
"If the work that the government and the work that we are going to do is not successful, they'll simply be back there for the same kind of experience in another few days, and we're talking of millions of children across the country," he said.
Morris is U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special envoy for the humanitarian crisis in southern Africa, where aid workers say up to 13 million people face famine in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland and Lesotho.
"In my judgment, if you set aside the worldwide AIDS/HIV phenomenon...what's happening in these six countries is the most serious humanitarian disaster crisis in the world today," he told journalists last week.
"Our numbers of need will grow as we get further away from the last harvest. We're working hard to bring new donors into the fold."
Once the breadbasket of southern Africa, Zimbabwe now needs food aid because of a dramatic maize shortage, which aid agencies partly blame on President Robert Mugabe's seizure of land from minority white farmers for redistribution to landless blacks.
The government says the shortage is due solely to a drought that has hit small-scale black farmers who account for 70 percent of Zimbabwe's annual maize output.
AIDS ORPHANS
Bindura hospital officials also told Morris of a critical shortage of drugs to treat diseases related to HIV/AIDS, which health experts say is killing over 2,500 Zimbabweans each week.
In the nearby rural district of Matepa, an old woman queuing to buy Zimbabwe's scarce staple maize meal under a food-for-work scheme told Morris she had to forage for wild fruit to feed her 10 grandchildren, all orphaned by AIDS.
"The magnitude of hardship was engraved on the faces I saw, and I was struck by the tragic stories people told. Clearly everyday is a massive struggle to survive, and the situation will only worsen over the months ahead," Morris told journalists.
Mugabe's government had assured him it would allow international aid agencies to bring in food aid without interference.
The government has accused some agencies of working to promote the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change under the guise of humanitarian work. The opposition in turn says the government has ensured that only its supporters get food aid.
Last week, Zimbabwe Health Minister David Parirenyatwa confirmed the government had softened its stance and would accept genetically modified (GM) whole maize into the country.
"We will quarantine and mill it before it is distributed," Parirenyatwa told Reuters.
Until now, the government has said it would only allow imports of ground maize to prevent GM grain being planted locally.
Like several other countries in the region, Zimbabwe has been reluctant to feed its people maize from the United States, which is unable to certify its food donations as GM-free.
