{"id":763596,"date":"2019-12-12T13:24:24","date_gmt":"2019-12-12T13:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ghana-mma.com\/2019\/12\/12\/red-cross-calls-for-immediate-action-to-aid-millions-facing-hunger-in-southern-africa\/"},"modified":"2019-12-12T13:24:24","modified_gmt":"2019-12-12T13:24:24","slug":"red-cross-calls-for-immediate-action-to-aid-millions-facing-hunger-in-southern-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2019\/12\/12\/red-cross-calls-for-immediate-action-to-aid-millions-facing-hunger-in-southern-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Cross calls for immediate action to aid millions facing hunger in southern Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Johannesburg –\u00a0Hunger is threatening the lives of 11 million people in southern Africa due to\u00a0deepening drought, with Red Cross teams across Botswana, eSwatini, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia and Zambia scaling up their response to emergency and crisis levels of food insecurity, the\u00a0International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Zambia and Zimbabwe have seen the most significant increase in food insecurity from last year, with 2.3 million and 3.6 million people respectively suffering from acute shortages, the IFRC said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

It called for 7.7 million Swiss francs to mitigate the crisis, saying the overall objective of the\u00a0multi-country emergency appeal was to provide immediate food assistance and livelihood recovery support to the most affected households in targeted communities for 14 months.<\/p>\n

“This year\u2019s drought is unprecedented, causing food shortages on a scale we have never seen here before,\u201d\u00a0said Dr Michael Charles, head of the IFRC\u2019s southern Africa cluster.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are seeing people going two to three days without food, entire herds of livestock wiped out by drought and small-scale farmers with no means to earn money to tide them over a lean season.\u201d<\/p>\n