Tag Archives: Food Shortage

Is Haiti forgotten? Where is the media? They need our help!

Residents ask for food at the end of a food distribution after Hurricane Matthew in Saint Jean du Sud, Haiti,

By Kami Klein

A Picture. Hopefully for Haiti, it takes only one in this world of media, where the fight to grab the attention of the public shifts in seconds.  

Only a few weeks ago, as Hurricane Matthew made a direct hit on the poor country of Haiti, the news organizations were covering the devastation every hour and prayers were said around the world.  Now, there is an eerie silence in that same media for the Haitian people.

Over 90% of their homes are destroyed. All of their crops annihilated. Drinking water is slowly becoming poison.  There is no electricity and very little protection from the elements.  So many areas in Haiti are impossible to get to because of the damage.  Food is being airdropped but no one really knows the fate of these people shut off from medical help and the basic needs for life.  

Whether it is politically motivated or perhaps just the hunger for new stories to bring ratings in the media outlets, Haiti is already forgotten and the tragedy for these people  is only beginning.  

We will not forget the people of Haiti.

Thanks to Gary Heavin, founder and former CEO of the fitness chain Curves, producer and actor and a remarkable friend to this ministry, we are able to truly be of assistance. Gary has been on the ground and in the air helping Haiti.  He is one of the few that owns a cargo plane that can get to these remote places and has been tirelessly distributing the food and water filtration as well as solar flashlights and other necessities to these desperate people.  We KNOW that what we are sending is getting to those that really need it!   

We ask you to pray for Haiti and for those amazing people who are there in a great time of need!  We are also asking for your help!  It is through your donations that these emergency items for Haiti are possible. If you wish to help Haiti, please see the link below!   

 

Haiti Hurricane Relief

Venezuela opposition marches against Maduro ‘dictatorship’

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro speaks during a pro-government rally at Miraflores Palace in Caracas, Venezuela

By Alexandra Ulmer and Andrew Cawthorne

CARACAS (Reuters) – Opposition supporters headed to rallies around Venezuela on Wednesday against unpopular socialist President Nicolas Maduro, whom they accuse of turning into a dictator by preventing a plebiscite to remove him.

The oil-rich South American country is in the throes of a punishing recession that has many poor families skipping meals or surviving on starches amid scarce food and triple-digit inflation.

The opposition coalition says Maduro must go before the situation worsens, but Venezuela’s electoral authorities last week canceled a planned signature drive to hold a recall referendum against him, citing fraud.

An outraged opposition said Maduro, a former bus driver and union leader, had crossed the line.

It held a march led by women dressed in white on Saturday, launched a political trial against him in Congress on Tuesday, and organized marches called the “Takeover of Venezuela” for Wednesday.

“We are in the final stage of this democratic fight,” said jailed opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez in tweets from his prison cell posted by his family. “Let the streets and highways send a message to the repression and censorship of this dictatorship.”

Some opposition supporters reported on social media that roadblocks by security forces were delaying their entry into Caracas, where many businesses were staying shut and some parents were keeping children away from school.

“I am marching today for my future, but also for theirs,” said teacher Mariana Hurtado, dressed in white and accompanied by her two teenage children, all carrying Venezuelan flags.

“We’ve had two decades of a failed experiment. How much longer? … Get out, leave us in peace. You’ve stolen and destroyed our beautiful country enough.”

“THE REVOLUTION WILL CONTINUE!”

Maduro, elected to replace late leader Hugo Chavez after his death three years ago, counters it is in fact the opposition vying for a coup beneath the veneer of peaceful protests.

Chavez was briefly toppled in a 2002 putsch, where some of the current opposition leaders played key roles.

“Some want to see Venezuela full of violence and divided,” a red-shirted Maduro told cheering supporters at a rally on Tuesday, where he vowed to stand firm. “They won’t return! The revolution will continue!” he said, pumping his fist.

Opposition protests two years ago, championed by Lopez, led to 43 deaths, including security officials and both government and opposition supporters. As a result, some Venezuelans are wary of demonstrations or see them as futile.

And Venezuela’s poor have to prioritize the all-consuming task of finding affordable food, while many remain skeptical of the opposition, which has a reputation for elitism and whose internal squabbles have for years been a boon for “Chavismo.”

Still, the opposition estimates 1 million anti-government protesters flooded Caracas early last month in the biggest demonstration for over a decade, and was hoping for a similar or better turnout across Venezuela on Wednesday.

Maduro said he was convening a special Committee for the Defense of the Nation at the presidential palace on Wednesday, to analyze the National Assembly’s actions against him and a tentatively scheduled dialogue with the opposition this weekend.

National Assembly head Henry Ramos, a veteran politician who swaps insults with Maduro near-daily, was invited.

(Additional reporting by Corina Pons, Girish Gupta, Eyanir Chinea, and Diego Ore Editing by W Simon)

Washington state ‘grossly’ unprepared for major quake: report

Skyline of Seattle Washington

(Reuters) – Washington state is grossly unprepared for a large earthquake and tsunami that may strike in the coming decades, putting it at risk for a humanitarian disaster, the Seattle Times reported on Sunday, citing a draft government report.

Anticipating a poor response to such a disaster, the state’s emergency managers will begin asking residents to stock enough food and other supplies to survive on their own for two weeks, the newspaper said.

The Pacific Northwest region was once thought to be a low risk for a massive earthquake, compared with its coastal neighbor California.

Researchers, however, have come to believe that an 8.0 to 9.0 magnitude temblor has shaken Oregon and Washington every 230 years or so. The last struck about 315 years ago, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, so one is overdue.

To prepare for that possibility, Washington officials organized a four-day exercise called “Cascadia Rising” in June, and the results were laid out in a draft report, the Seattle Times reported.

“The state’s current mindset and approach to disaster response is not suitable to a catastrophic scale incident,” the assessment says, according to a copy the newspaper published online.

The draft report recommends expanding the emergency authority of Washington’s governor and putting in place plans for mass sheltering and feeding, among other steps.

The state Emergency Management Division wants to spend $750,000 a year urging people to have emergency kits that would last up to two weeks, the Seattle Times said.

On the Olympic Peninsula, which is vulnerable to being cut off if roads and bridges are damaged, people may be on their own for twice that long, an official told the newspaper.

“What you have on hand when this occurs is how you’re going to survive,” said Clallam County emergency coordinator Penny Linterman.

(Reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Like a nuclear bomb; cholera and destruction after hurricane in Haiti

Relatives and patients treated for cholera after Hurricane Matthew in the Hospital of Port-a-Piment, Haiti,

By Gabriel Stargardter

PORT-A-PIMENT, Haiti (Reuters) – Patients arrived every 10 or 15 minutes, brought on motorcycles by relatives with vomit-covered shoulders and hoisted up the stairs into southwest Haiti’s Port-a-Piment hospital, where they could rest their weak, cholera-sapped limbs.

Less than a week since Hurricane Matthew slammed into Haiti, killing at least 1,000 people according to a tally of numbers from local officials, devastated corners of the country are facing a public health crisis as cholera gallops through rural communities lacking clean water, food and shelter.

Reuters visited the Port-a-Piment hospital early on Sunday morning, the first day southwestern Haiti’s main coastal road had become semi-navigable by car.

At that time, there were 39 cases of cholera, according to Missole Antoine, the hospital’s medical director. By the early afternoon, there were nearly 60, and four people had died of the waterborne illness.

“That number is going to rise,” said Antoine, as she rushed between patients laid out on the hospital floor.

Although there were 13 cases of cholera before Matthew hit, Antoine said the cases had risen drastically since the hurricane cut off the desperately poor region.

The hospital lacks an ambulance, or even a car, and Antoine said many new patients were coming from miles away, carried by family members on camp beds.

Inside the hospital, grim-faced parents cradled young children whose eyes had sunk back and were unable to prop up their own heads.

“I believe in the doctors, and also in God,” said 37-year-old Roosevelt Dume, holding the head of his son, Roodly, as he tried to remain upbeat.

RUBBLE

Out on the streets, the scene was also shocking. For miles on end, almost all the houses were reduced to little more than rubble and twisted metal. Colorful clothes were littered among the chaos.

The region’s banana crop was destroyed with vast fields of plantain flattened into a leafy mush. With neither government or foreign aid arriving quickly, people relied on felled coconuts for food and water.

The stench of death, be it human or animal, was everywhere.

In the village of Labei, near Port-a-Piment, locals said the river had washed down cadavers from villages upstream. With nobody coming to move the corpses, residents used planks of driftwood to push them down the river and into the sea.

Down by the shore, the corpse of one man lay blistering in the sun. A few hundred meters to his left in a roadside gully, three dead goats stewed in the toxic slime.

“It seems to me like a nuclear bomb went off,” said Paul Edouarzin, a United Nations Environmental Program employee based near Port-a-Piment.

“In terms of destruction – environmental and agricultural – I can tell you 2016 is worse than 2010,” he added, referring to the devastating 2010 earthquake from which Haiti has yet to recover.

Damaged houses are seen after Hurricane Matthew passes in Jeremie, Haiti,

Damaged houses are seen after Hurricane Matthew passes in Jeremie, Haiti, October 9, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

Diarrhea-stricken residents in the village of Chevalier were well aware of the nearby cholera outbreak, but had little option except to drink the brackish water from the local well that they believed was already contaminated by dead livestock.

“We have been abandoned by a government that never thinks of us,” said Marie-Ange Henry, as she surveyed her smashed home.

She said Chevalier had yet to receive any aid and many, like her, were coming down with fever. Cholera, she feared, was on its way.

Pierre Moise Mongerard, a pastor, was banking on divine assistance to rescue his roofless church in the village of Torbeck. In his Sunday best – a sports coat, chinos and brown leather shoes – he joined a small choir in songs that echoed out into the surrounding rice fields.

“We hope that God gives us the possibility to rebuild the Church and help the victims here in this area,” he said, before the music seized him, and he slowly joined in the chant, closing his eyes and turning his palms up toward the sky.

(Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Kieran Murray)

HELP FOR HAITI

Hurricane Matthew toll in Haiti rises to 1000, dead begin buried in mass graves

Destroyed houses are seen after Hurricane Matthew passes in Corail, Haiti

By Joseph Guyler Delva

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) – Haiti started burying some of its dead in mass graves in the wake of Hurricane Matthew, a government official said on Sunday, as cholera spread in the devastated southwest and the death toll from the storm rose to 1,000 people.

The powerful hurricane, the fiercest Caribbean storm in nearly a decade, slammed into Haiti on Tuesday with 145 mile-per-hour (233 kph) winds and torrential rains that left 1.4 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

A Reuters tally of numbers from local officials showed that 1,000 people were killed by the storm in Haiti, which has a population of about 10 million and is the poorest country in the Americas.

The official death toll from the central civil protection agency is 336, a slower count because officials must visit each village to confirm the numbers.

Authorities had to start burying the dead in mass graves in Jeremie because the bodies were starting to decompose, said Kedner Frenel, the most senior central government official in the Grand’Anse region on Haiti’s western peninsula.

Frenel said 522 people were killed in Grand’Anse alone. A tally of deaths reported by mayors from 15 of 18 municipalities in Sud Department on the south side of the peninsula showed 386 people there. In the rest of the country, 92 people were killed, the same tally showed.

Two girls play amid the rubble after Hurricane Matthew in a street of Port-a-Piment, Haiti,

Two girls play amid the rubble after Hurricane Matthew in a street of Port-a-Piment, Haiti, October 9, 2016. REUTERS/Andres Martinez Casares

Frenel said there was great concern about cholera spreading, and that authorities were focused on getting water, food and medication to the thousands of people living in shelters.

Cholera causes severe diarrhoea and can kill within hours if untreated. It is spread through contaminated water and has a short incubation period, which leads to rapid outbreaks.

Government teams fanned out across the hard-hit southwestern tip of the country over the weekend to repair treatment centres and reach the epicentre of one outbreak.

(Reporting by Joseph Guyler Delva; Writing by Christine Murray; Editing by Diane Craft and Paul Tait)

U.N. – situation ‘rapidly deteriorating’ in embattled Afghan city

Afghan security forces keep watch in front of their armoured vehicle in Kunduz city, Afghanistan

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Fighting in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz has led to a “rapidly deteriorating” humanitarian situation, officials said on Thursday, leaving thousands of people with limited access to food, water, or medical care.

Street-to-street gun battles have continued for four days after Taliban militants slipped past the city’s defenses on Monday.

Government troops, backed by U.S. special forces and air strikes, have repeatedly declared that they are in control of the city, but residents report that heavy fighting has forced many people to flee.

The fighting has forced as many as 10,000 people from their homes in Kunduz, the United Nations reported, with those who remain facing serious water, food and electricity shortages, as well as threats from the fighting.

“Many families were unable to bring their possessions with them and are in a precarious position,” Dominic Parker, head of the U.N.’s humanitarian coordination office, said in a statement. “We have had reports that some families have been forced to sleep out in the open and many have few food supplies.”

Among those fleeing Kunduz are about two-thirds of the staff at the city’s main public hospital, which was struck by several rockets and small arms fire, said Marzia Yaftali Salaam, a doctor.

The 200-bed public hospital is the main provider of medical care in Kunduz after a more advanced trauma center run by Medecins Sans Frontieres was destroyed by an American air strike last year.

In the past three days, the hospital has been inundated by at least 210 patients, many of them civilians, including women and children, wounded in the fighting, Salaam said.

“Many of the wounded had to be carried to clinics in surrounding districts and private clinics in the city,” she said. “If the situation remains the same, we may be forced to halt our services.”

During a lull in the fighting on Wednesday, nearly 50 casualties were rushed to the hospital in the span of a few hours, said Hameed Alam, head of the public health department in Kunduz.

The U.S. military command in Kabul said Afghan forces are “defeating Taliban attempts to take Kunduz,” with reinforcements on the way and commandos continuing to clear “isolated pockets” of Taliban fighters.

The Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan with an iron fist from 1996 to 2001, are seeking to topple the Western-backed government in Kabul and reimpose Islamic rule.

“There is fighting in every street and the situation is critical,” said Ismail Kawasi, a spokesman for the Public Health Ministry in Kabul.

Additional medical supplies and personnel were positioned in neighboring provinces, but they must wait for the fighting to subside before they can be flown to Kunduz, he said.

(Reporting by Sardar Razmal; Additional reporting by Mirwais Harooni in Kabul; Writing by Josh Smith; Editing by Nick Macfie and Dominic Evans)

Half of Aleppo residents want to flee, no food, fuel, no aid

A medic holds a dead child after airstrikes in the rebel held Karam Houmid neighbourhood in Aleppo

By Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) – Half of the estimated 275,000 Syrians besieged in eastern Aleppo want to leave, the United Nations said on Wednesday, as food supplies are running thin and people are driven to burning plastic for fuel.

Food prices are rising and supplies are running out. Mothers were reportedly tying ropes around their stomachs or drinking large amounts of water to reduce the feeling of hunger and prioritize food for their children, the U.N. said.

“An assessment conducted in eastern Aleppo city concluded that 50 percent of the inhabitants expressed willingness to leave if they can,” the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in an update on the Aleppo situation.

It did not say how many of the other 50 percent were determined to stay.

The United States and other Western countries say Moscow and Damascus are guilty of war crimes in deliberately targeting civilians, hospitals and aid deliveries for more than 250,000 people trapped under siege in Aleppo. The Syrian and Russian governments say they target only militants.

Aid workers in eastern Aleppo have distributed food rations for 13,945 children under 6 years old, but a lack of cooking gas makes it difficult to cook what little food remains.

MENTAL HEALTH

“Reports of civilians rummaging through the rubble of destroyed buildings to salvage any flammable material that can be used for cooking are common,” the report said.

“Poor-quality fuel, which is made from burning plastic, is available in limited amounts.”

A liter of diesel fuel costs about 1,300 Syrian pounds or about $2.25, while a liter of petrol costs 7,000 Syrian pounds or about $13.70.

Psychological health is also suffering, the report said.

“Moreover, arguments among spouses have reportedly increased as many women are blaming their husbands for choosing to stay while it was possible to leave the city.”

Civilians are walking up to 2 km to fetch water, which is available from boreholes, and the water situation across the city is “of grave concern”, the report said.

“Local authorities in charge of the Sulaiman Al-Halabi water station shut off the electrical power to the station to prevent extensive damage should hostilities impact the water station directly,” it said.

(editing by Ralph Boulton)

Famine killing tens of thousands in West Africa : biggest crisis anywhere

By Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of people are dying of hunger in the area of west Africa where Boko Haram militants are active, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the region, told a news conference on Friday.

About 65,000 people are in a “catastrophe” or “phase 5” situation, according to a food security assessment by the IPC, the recognized classification system on declaring famines.

Phase 5 applies when, even with humanitarian assistance, “starvation, death and destitution” are evident.

“The tragedy of using the F word is that when you apply it it’s too late,” said Toby Lanzer, who has also worked in South Sudan, Darfur and Chechnya.

Boko Haram militants have killed about 15,000 people and displaced more than 2 million in a seven-year insurgency and they still launch deadly attacks despite having been pushed out of the vast swathes of territory they controlled in 2014.

“This is the first time I’ve come across people talking about phase 5. The reason for that was simply a lack of access. We couldn’t get to places,” Lanzer said.

“Because of the insecurity sown almost exclusively by Boko Haram, people have missed three planting seasons.”

Asked if it was safe to assume that tens of thousands of people were dying, Lanzer said: “It’s not what we’re assuming, it’s what the IPC states. And I back that number.

“I can tell you from my first trip outside (the regional capital) Maiduguri, I had never gone to places that had adults who were so depleted of energy that they could barely walk.”

One aid agency reported back from the Nigerian town of Bama that its staff had counted the graves of about 430 children who had died of hunger in the past few weeks, Lanzer said.

With millions more short of food in northern Nigerian and regions of the adjoining countries, the situation could get much worse, and could turn into the “biggest crisis facing any of us anywhere”, he said.

“We’re now talking about 568,000 across the Lake Chad basin who are severely malnourished, 400,000 of them are in the northeast of Nigeria. We know that over the next 12 months, 75,000, maybe as many as 80,000, children will die in the northeast of Nigeria, unless we can reach them with specialized therapeutic food,” Lanzer said.

Across the Lake Chad region, more than 6 million people are described as “severely food insecure”, including 4.5 million in Nigeria, he said.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

Hunger ‘deadlier than violence’ in Boko Haram-hit northeast Nigeria

Writings describing Boko Haram are seen on the wall along a street in Bama, in Borno, Nigeria

By Kieran Guilbert

DAKAR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Living conditions for people uprooted by Boko Haram violence and seeking refuge in camps and towns across northeast Nigeria are more deadly than the conflict between the Islamist militants and the army, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Wednesday.

Hunger and malnutrition is widespread among the displaced in Borno State, not just in remote, previously inaccessible areas, but also in the capital Maiduguri, the medical aid group said.

Coordination of relief efforts must be drastically improved and food aid urgently delivered to people in need across Borno, where the humanitarian situation is reaching “catastrophic levels”, said MSF emergency program manager Natalie Roberts.

“It is shocking to see so many people malnourished in Maiduguri, not just in isolated and hard-to-reach areas,” Roberts told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

“Aid actors have access, and there has been no Boko Haram presence for the last few years, but people are starving to death inside Maiduguri. Millions are in a nutrition crisis.”

MSF said it had recently gained access to Ngala and Gambaru, towns previously cut off from aid, where tens of thousands of people have little or nothing to eat and at least one in 10 children are suffering from life-threatening malnutrition.

Yet the medical charity said it was most concerned about the situation in Maiduguri, where malnutrition rates in some parts of the city are as high as those seen in conflict-hit areas.

Boko Haram violence has left more than 65,000 people living in famine in the northeast, with one million others at risk, and more than half of children under five are malnourished in some areas of Borno, several aid groups said last week.

Many women in aid camps in the northeast are resorting to selling sex in exchange for food and money with which to feed their families, medical charity International Medical Corps and Nigerian research group NOI Polls said this week.

Roberts said the aid response across Borno was insufficient and uncoordinated, leaving many people without any assistance.

“Civilians are not receiving aid, and find themselves trapped between Boko Haram and the military’s operations.”

The Islamist militant group has killed about 15,000 people and displaced more than 2 million in Nigeria in a seven-year insurgency aimed at creating a state adhering to Islamic laws.

A military offensive has driven Boko Haram from much of the territory it held in northern Nigeria, but the militants have continued to carry out suicide bombings and raids in northeast Nigeria and neighboring Cameroon, Niger and Chad.

(Reporting by Kieran Guilbert, Editing by Katie Nguyen. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)

Cost hampers drive to double number of children treated for starvation

Malnourished children wait for medical attention at the Halo health post in Halo village, a drought-stricken area in Oromia region in Ethiopia,

By Alex Whiting

ROME (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A drive to give six million severely malnourished children life-saving treatment every year by 2020 – twice the current number – will only succeed if governments prioritize it alongside other killers and treatment costs are cut, hunger experts said on Thursday.

The number of children treated for severe hunger has plateaued at just over 3 million in recent years, comprising a fraction of the 16 million who need it, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF said.

“Severe acute malnutrition is a silent emergency,” said Diane Holland, senior nutrition advisor at UNICEF in New York.

“Greater advocacy around the issue is essential, so that governments, companies and civil society organizations mobilize and make treatment … a priority,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

A child suffering from severe hunger is up to nine times more likely to die from malaria, pneumonia and diarrhea, according to Saul Guerrero, director of nutrition for Action Against Hunger UK.

“The performance and impact of absolutely every intervention worldwide addressing malaria, pneumonia and diarrhea will be significantly enhanced if the children … are simultaneously treated for severe acute malnutrition,” he said from New York.

UNICEF and Action Against Hunger are part of a coalition which aims to double the numbers of children treated for extreme hunger.

No Wasted Lives also includes the European Union, UK government and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation.

Two thirds of children who are severely malnourished are in Asia, and a third in Africa. The majority of cases are in countries where there is no hunger emergency, UNICEF said.

Severe acute malnutrition is treated with a paste of peanuts and dried milk, which costs between $150 and $200 a child, but to boost the number of children on treatment, that price tag needs to drop to less than $100 per child, the coalition said.

Many of the treatments are made in Europe and north America.

So producing more treatments in countries where they are needed, finding cheaper but equally effective ingredients – perhaps chickpeas or sesame seeds – would help cut costs, Guerrero said.

Children also need treatment nearer home – at the moment many have to be taken long distances to a health clinic.

The coalition is proposing that community health workers who treat malaria, pneumonia and diarrhea, are also trained in treating severe hunger.

No Wasted Lives was launched in New York on Tuesday. A high-level U.N. meeting on how to end hunger by 2030, is taking place in New York on Thursday.

(Reporting by Alex Whiting, Editing by Katie Nguyen. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)