[pronut-hiv] Mozambique: Food Security Improves

["ProNut-HIV" <pronut-hiv@healthnet.org>]

Mozambique: Food Security Improves

Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
June 28, 2006
Maputo

Thanks to good rainfall this year, Mozambique's food and nutritional
security has improved substantially, according to the latest assessment
from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).

A harvest report from WFP, released on Wednesday, warned that across
the southern African region, despite a general improvement in harvests,
"more than three million people would remain short of food because of
chronic vulnerability caused by grinding poverty and the world's highest
rates of HIV/AIDS". In this regional picture, Mozambique is one of the
brighter spots. The WFP release puts this year's grain harvest at 2.3
million tonnes, "compared with a national requirement of 2.6 million
tonnes".

As a result WFP envisaged a 30 per cent drop in Mozambique's need for
food aid, apart from those sections of the population described as
"critically vulnerable".

An assessment team noted signs of improvement such as "more frequent
daily meals and better household diet". The water supply and sanitation
situation had also improved, as a result partly of the rains, and partly
of new wells and boreholes.

Elsewhere in the region, WFP reports that Malawi has recorded its best
harvest in nearly five years, Lesotho's harvest is up by 24 per cent on
last year's, and even Zimbabwe's food aid needs are likely to be only
300,000 tonnes, just 25 per cent of last year's figure.

"It is great news that the region will have a reprieve from the major
food deficits seen over the last few years," said WFP Executive
Director, James Morris, cited by the release. "But as long as HIV/AIDS
remains at such epic proportions throughout southern Africa, a large
number of people will face severe hardship unless international
assistance is provided. Good harvests do not necessarily mean people
have enough to eat." WFP points out that "because southern Africa has
nine of the 10 highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rates in the world, many
people are just too ill to work land or earn an income. The small amount
of cash in poor HIV/AIDS-affected families is usually spent on medicines
to treat their loved ones and on funerals".

"Food and good nutrition are crucial in battling against HIV/AIDS, but
it is very tough to convince the international community of the
complexity and depth of the pandemic in this region, especially when
people's misery is masked by green fields and good harvests," Morris
warned.

"Unlike crises elsewhere, the humanitarian challenges caused by
HIV/AIDS in southern Africa will linger on for generations," Morris
said. "Desperate hungry people should not have to compete for
international assistance according to their level of deprivation.
Turning away from people devastated by AIDS because of other crises
should not be an option for the international community."

WFP estimates that it needs 85.5 million US dollars to provide food aid
for around three million people in southern Africa from now until
December. After December, the number is expected to rise, as household
food stocks run out, and the region enters the "hungry period" in the
months immediately preceding the next main harvest.