The UN emergency food agency appealed for immediate funding on Wednesday, warning that deepening hunger is undermining the response to an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) that has now infected more than 3,200 people.
“Ebola feeds on delay, fear and hunger,” said Carl Skau, acting Executive Director of the World Food Program (WFP). “Stopping this outbreak requires all hands on deck and communities at the centre.”
Declared in eastern DRC on 15 May, the Ebola outbreak is the fastest growing on record. Full-blown Ebola caused by the Bundibugyo virus is marked by severe bleeding and a fatality rate of around 40 per cent.
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) issued a stark warning that food assistance and logistics are critical to containing the outbreak.
“Food assistance is frontline Ebola containment,” Mr. Skau said. “It helps families stay home, supports safe isolation, builds trust with communities and keeps health teams moving.
“We know what works. What we need now is the speed and resources to scale it before this outbreak outruns the response.”
Such efforts also help reduce movement of people in search of food, supports safe isolation, lowers the risk of harmful coping strategies and creates the social conditions for health actors to operate safely and effectively, the agency said.
The UN is actively helping authorities respond to the outbreak, including through its food agency, WHO and its children’s fund, UNICEF.
Here are highlights of some WFP efforts in DRC:
- Since the onset of the outbreak, the agency’s UN Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS) has operated 495 flights, transported 3,395 humanitarian responders and delivered 56 metric tonnes of essential cargo to frontline locations, including newly affected provinces such as Haut-Uele and Tshopo
- WFP has delivered more than 160,000 hot meals to patients, contacts and frontline workers in 17 treatment and isolation centres
- WFP has also provided dry food rations to 23,000 people in North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri, including 14,000 people under quarantine with monthly food assistance
- An additional 36,000 people in Ebola-affected zones have been reached with general food assistance
Speed and resources are the main challenges, and every delay gives Ebola more room to spread, while gaps in logistics, food assistance and community support risk weakening containment efforts, according to WFP.
At the same time, insecurity, access constraints, community unrest and limited operational capacity in newly affected areas continue to complicate surveillance, supply movements and response scale up.
To sustain all operations in DRC for the next six months, WFP requires $293.6 million, which includes funding for emergency logistics and food assistance in Ituri and other affected areas.
