Mauritanians face hunger due to aid shortfall- WFP

NOUAKCHOTT, Mar 7 (Reuters) Some 68,000 children in Mauritania face malnutrition due to a shortfall in aid as the annual ''lean season'' approaches after a poor harvest, the World Food Programme said.

The United Nations food agency said yesterday it required an additional 14.4 million dollars from donors to maintain rations of mineral- and vitamin-rich food to mothers and young children at over 600 feeding centres across the West African desert state.

''We are raising the flag early,'' WFP Country Director, Gian Carlo Cirri, said in a statement. ''Considerable and hard won gains in the battle against hunger are at risk.'' According to a recent survey by UN child agency UNICEF, the rate of acute malnutrition in Mauritania has fallen to 8 per cent from 13 per cent in 2001. Chronic malnutrition has slipped to 25 per cent from 38 per cent in the same period, the survey said.

Cereal production in Mauritania per capita this year was 7.7 per cent lower than the average of the past five years, and prices in local markets have already increased.

The regions that are of most concern are in the south -- Trarza, Brakna, Guidimakha and Gorgol -- where acute malnutrition rates are more than 10 per cent, above the World Health Organisation's emergency threshold.

According to a WFP study, 165,000 people -- or 9 per cent of the population -- depend on humanitarian assistance to survive through the toughest months of the year.

Mauritania holds presidential elections on Sunday to return it to democratic rule after a bloodless August 2005 coup ended the two-decade authoritarian rule of President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya.

Reuters SY DB0954