The United Nations has called on the government of the tiny southern African kingdom of Lesotho to declare a state of emergency over worsening food shortages caused by drought, South Africa's public broadcaster SABC reported Friday according to dpa. The 2006-07 growing season saw one of the worst droughts in recent decades in Lesotho, during which average harvests of the staple maize crop fell by more than 40 per cent, according to UN agencies. The drought is expected to continue throughout the 2007-08 season, bringing to around 400,000 people the number needing emergency food aid out of a total 1.9 million inhabitants, the UN World Food Programme and Food and Agricultural Organization predicted. Food shortages also further penalize HIV/AIDS sufferers, who need a healthy diet to be able to derive benefit from life-saving antiretrovirals (ARVs). An estimated 270,000 Basotho, or 14 per cent of the population, are infected with HIV/AIDS, according to UNAIDS. The World Food Programme is calling for urgent international aid to stimulate food production in Lesotho, a mountainous country of mainly subsistence farmers completely surrounded by South Africa. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) said earlier this week that southern Africa was expected to experience a shortage of 4.35 million metric tonnes of maize due to drought in the 2007-08 season, compared with a shortage of 2.18 million metric tonnes in 2006-07.
