The United Nations has more than doubled the number of people it plans to feed in Niger as dwindling food supplies in villages push more people close to the brink of starvation. The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) now aims to provide emergency rations to 2.5 million people compared with the 1.2 million it said it aimed to help last week, reflecting a major increase in the scale of its response, according to Reuters. "We are increasing the number to 2.5 million as more and more people's coping mechanisms are running short," said WFP spokeswoman Stefanie Savariaud, speaking by telephone from Niger's capital Niamey. "In this kind of emergency operation it's inevitable that the number of beneficiaries increases," she said. Relief workers treating children dying from hunger after drought and locusts wiped out last year's harvest say the United Nations, the government and other agencies should have started such large-scale emergency food aid much earlier. U.N. officials said early in July they would start the current type of emergency food distribution only as a last resort, fearing that acting prematurely could upset local food markets and encourage a damaging dependency on aid. Two WFP airlifts of emergency food supplies this weekend were due to deliver enough high-energy biscuits to feed 100,000 people while they wait for full rations to arrive. The U.N. agency also plans to airlift 186 tonnes of corn soya blend from Ivory Coast's main city Abidjan next week.
