WFP Chartered Planes Carrying Nutrition Supplements Arrive At Mogadish

Shabelle Media Network (Mogadishu)

27 July 2011

Mogadishu — An official of UN’s World Food Program said that WFP charted plane on Wednesday landed at Mogadishu international airport, the first shipment to airlift since UN declared famine in parts of Somalia.

Mrs. Marck Donar, a WFP official, told Al Jazeera that airlift nutrition supplements are destined to treat more malnourished children in Somalia.

She says more than 25,000 Somalis are severely malnutrished and are in desperate need for nutritional supplements.

The airlift is part of a crisis intervention as famine threatens to spread across lawless Somalia.

WFP spokeswoman Challiss McDonough said this is first of several planned airlifts in coming weeks. She said Wednesday’s shipment of peanut butter-based nutritional paste will treat 3,500 malnourished children for one month.

WFP says it cannot reach 2.2 million people in need of aid in the militant-controlled areas in southern Somalia because of insecurity.

Somalia has been embroiled in conflict for two decades, since the last leader was overthrown by warlords who then turned on each other. Islamist militant groups have spent the last few years battling the weak U.N.-backed government in an attempt to overthrow it.

Al-Shabab — the most dangerous militant group in Somalia — said last week it will not allow the aid groups to operate in its territories, exacerbating the drought crisis.

Earlier this month al-Shabab, which has links to al-Qaida, had shown indications of wavering on its 2009 ban on certain aid groups in its territories.

The drought has created a triangle of hunger where the borders of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia meet. WFP estimates more than 11.3 million people need aid across drought-hit regions in East Africa. The majority of those affected live in pastoral communities whose herds have been wiped out because of a lack of water.

Separately, UNICEF said Wednesday that it is trying to vaccinate more than 300,000 children in Kenya in an emergency program designed to prevent an outbreak of disease as refugees stream into northern Kenya.

Jayne Kariuki from UNICEF said that four northern Kenyan regions will be targeted along with Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee camp, during the two-week program to immunize the children against polio and measles.

The children will also receive vitamin A and de-worming tablets. In Liboi, a dusty town

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