Sulten står for døren hos hundredtusinder i Sierra Leone, Guinea og Liberia og manglen på mad i de i forvejen fattige vestafrikanske lande truer over en million mennesker på sigt, advarer to centralt placerede FN-organisationer.
ROME, 17 December 2014 (FAO – WFP): The number of people facing food insecurity due to the Ebola epidemic in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone could top one million by March 2015 unless access to food is drastically improved and measures are put in place to safeguard crop and livestock production, two UN agencies warned.
The disease’s impact is potentially devastating in the three countries already coping with chronic food insecurity, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) said in three country reports published Wednesday.
Border closures, quarantines, hunting bans and other restrictions are seriously hindering people’s access to food, threatening their livelihoods, disrupting food markets and processing chains, and worsening shortages stemming from crop losses in areas with the highest Ebola infection rates, the FAO-WFP reports stressed.
Worsening economic slowdown
In December 2014, half a million people are estimated to be severely food insecure in the three worst hit Western African countries.
The loss of productivity and household income due to Ebola-related deaths and illness as well as people staying away from work, for fear of contagion, is compounding an economic slowdown in the three countries.
The situation comes at a time when more food needs to be imported by all three countries, but revenues derived from export commodities are affected.
In their reports, the Rome-based FAO and WFP underscore how the outbreak of Ebola has caused a significant shock to the food and agriculture sectors in the affected countries.
While estimated crop losses appear relatively modest at national level, sharp disparities in production have emerged between areas with high infection rates and other regions in the three worst-hit countries.
In particular, labour shortages have marred farming operations such as planting and weeding while movement restrictions and fear of the disease have disrupted agricultural market chains.
Ebola has revealed the countries vulnerability
“The outbreak has revealed the vulnerability of current food production systems and value chains in the worst Ebola-affected countries”, said FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Africa, Bukar Tijani, adding:
“FAO and partners need to act urgently to overcome the agriculture and market disruptions and their immediate impact on livelihoods which could result in a food security crisis. With timely support, we can prevent the outbreak from having a severe and long-lasting impact on rural communities”.
“The outbreak of Ebola in West Africa has been a wake-up call for the world”, said WFP Emergency Response Coordinator Denise Brown in Dakar.
“The virus is having a terrible impact on the three worst-hit countries and will continue to affect many people’s access to food for the foreseeable future. While working with partners to make things better, we must be prepared for them to get worse,” she said.
Call for urgent action
FAO and WFP call for urgent action to re-establish the farming system in the three countries.
Measures should enable most severely affected people to access agricultural inputs, such as seeds and fertilizers, in time for the next planting season and adopt improved technology to address labour shortages.
The reports also recommend cash transfers or vouchers for affected people to buy food as a way of overcoming their income loss and help stimulate markets.
These efforts should go hand in hand with ongoing actions aimed at stopping the spread of the disease such as awareness-raising and related training.
In numbers
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