Addis Ababa, May 12, 2008 (Addis Ababa) - World Vision (WV), one of the world ‘s largest humanitarian organizations announced Monday that it is unable to continue providing food to some of the 9.7 million poor in Africa who have been supported with this aid until now.In presses statement it sent to ENA on Monday that WV is being forced to make deep cuts in its food aid programme in 17 countries of Africa due to dramatic hikes in global food price coupled with increase food demand and shrink global stocks.
Therefore, it said 1.3 million children out of two million people are unlikely to be reached with food aid that is critical for sustaining their health of not survival.
To mitigate this crisis, WV is calling on government and other donors to fund a shortfall of over 700 million USD in contributions to the World Food Program (WFP) which is the largest source of food aid in Africa.
Also urging the US government, as the largest food aid donors, to release an addition 600 million USD in committed funding to the WFP for maintaining food aid program in Africa.
The World Vision Ethiopia has called upon the international community to act now to support existing projects that will prevent vulnerable communities from becoming malnourished as a result of the pricing
crisis.
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