15 million food insecure in the Congo; new ebola outbreak is spreading

[Samira]

https://www.nrc.no/news/2018/october/hunger-levels-double-in-congo-as-violence-intensifies/

15 million women, men and children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are without enough food to eat, up from 7.7 million last year. Some people are even joining armed groups and going into prostitution as ways to find money for food.

“We are witnessing emergency levels of hunger and malnutrition in every town and village where we respond,” said Ulrika Blom, Country Director for NRC in DR Congo. “The new figures on food insecurity in DR Congo are incredibly alarming.”

A new report by the World Food Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organisation and DR Congo’s Ministry of Agriculture preliminary findings indicate that hunger has more than doubled across the country since this time last year. At least 15 million people - nearly one fifth of the population - are at severe to emergency levels of food insecurity.

The deteriorating hunger situation is concentrated in the ten provinces most adversely affected by violence. Conflict-related displacement is cited as the reason people are unable to access food. The intensified conflict across Congo’s eastern provinces paints a bleak future for civilians.

“In towns like Beni we know of hundreds of farmers who are too paralysed by fear of being killed by armed groups that they refuse to go to their fields to cultivate,” said Blom. “The violence in many areas is having a ripple effect on local economies, and causing people to resort to increasingly desperate coping mechanisms to feed themselves and their children.”

“We have witnessed people eating the raw seeds they receive for planting in an attempt to satisfy their hunger. Parents are going without food so that they can use the meagre portions they find to feed their children,” she added.

There have also been reports of women and girls in North Kivu going into prostitution to make money to buy food, as well as some men and boys joining armed groups just to receive regular meals. Some parents in South Kivu’s Fizi territory have taken their underage children out of school to send them to work in minefields so that money can be earned to feed the family.

Food production in DR Congo has fallen fast over the last 12 months. Staple foods like maize, cassava and rice have seen an average decline of 39 per cent in production levels compared to the previous season. Even major towns such as Beni that were previously food secure, are showing signs of moderate to severe levels of hunger.

The international community has showed its ability to quickly scale up their support in response to the Ebola crisis in DR Congo. Still, only 27 per cent of the funds requested to meet the humanitarian needs in DR Congo for 2018 has been received. Donor countries must scale up support for food, nutrition education and sanitation projects, areas that are essential for people’s survival.

“We must not lose sight of the forest for the trees. A scale up in international action is needed now. Without food, people will die,” warned Blom.

 

[Samira]

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/10/dr-congo-ebola-claims-24-lives-week-181016061932750.html

At least 33 people have been infected with the deadly Ebola virus in the past week, 24 of which have since passed away, the health ministry of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) said.

According to the ministry, the cases were discovered between October 8 and October 14.

So far, 211 confirmed and probable cases of Ebola have been reported since early July, when the latest outbreak of the disease started, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.

Of those, 138 people have died from the highly deadly hemorrhagic fever.

The latest Ebola outbreak started in July and could go on for another three or four months, the WHO has said.

In recent weeks, the rate of new Ebola cases has more than doubled after rebel violence in northeastern DRC caused response efforts to be briefly suspended, health officials said earlier this week.

Most of the new cases have been in Beni, a city of several hundred thousand people,where experts had to suspend Ebola containment efforts for days after a deadly rebelattack killed 21.

The Congolese army has blamed the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a notorious rebel group, for that attack.

With multiple armed groups active in the region, health officials have said they are effectively operating in a warzone.

In a response to the violence, the government said it would deploy security forces to protect teams transporting the bodies of Ebola victims for burial

Earlier this week, the WHO noted that all of the health workers who have caught Ebola in this epidemic - 19 so far - have been infected outside of hospitals or clinics, meaning that the virus is spreading in the community.

Following the rapid increase in cases in northeastern DRC, the WHO also warned the disease might spread to neighbouring Rwanda and Uganda, adding that those countries are well prepared but have not yet approved the use of a vaccine.

 

[Muji]

Why do bad things always happen to Africans @Samira

 

[EDsomali]

Somalia seems live heaven compared to this place.

 

[Twwin]

Sad indeed.

 

[GBTarmy]

When will they stop eating monkeys?

 

[Saalax Bidaar]

Yet Congo is probably one of the most resource rich and one of the most beautiful countries on earth

 

[Samira]

Why do bad things always happen to Africans @Samira

Bad things are decreed to happen to all who love life

 

[Ramen]

These wypipo are slowly infecting food with diseases.
Theyre smart tbh
people suffering + a company that "helps" starving africans + ads about ebola and africans + people donating money to the company= company gets rich

 

[SomaliSavage0]

The result of eating monkey meat lol

But it is good they doing self remediation by scaling down their population every now and then