The United Nations’s World Food Programme (WFP) plans to double the number of food aid recipients in Zimbabwe where roughly 7 million people are facing severe hunger.
In an emailed statement to Bloomberg, WFP Executive Director David Beasley said:
We’re deep into a vicious cycle of sky-rocketing malnutrition that’s hitting women and children hardest and will be tough to break.
With poor rains forecast yet again in the run-up to the main harvest in April, the scale of hunger in the country is going to get worse before it gets better.
Zimbabwe was struck by two extreme weather phenomena last season, the severest drought in a generation and the most powerful cyclone to ever hit the Southern Hemisphere.
Poor planning on the part of authorities has exacerbated the problem of starvation.