Uganda begins emergency food handouts after 19 die from hunger

Food distribution under way at Potome primary school, Lodiko, watched by Sam Engola, Uganda’s minister for disaster preparedness. Photograph: Prime minister's office, Uganda View image in fullscreen Food distribution under way at Potome primary school, Lodiko, watched by Sam Engola, Uganda’s minister for disaster preparedness. Photograph: Prime minister's office, Uganda Uganda begins emergency food handouts after 19 die from hunger Government move follows months of drought and crop failures in Karamoja, with 1.5m people facing malnutrition Uganda has launched emergency food relief distribution after at least 19 deaths from hunger were reported in an area of prolonged drought in the east of the country. A crisis has been building in the Karamoja region of Uganda as crops have failed without the season’s expected rains, leaving the region’s 1.5 million people facing acute food shortages and rising malnutrition. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (Fews Net), a global mapping network designed to raise the alert on food security, reported the situation had deteriorated to a crisis across Karamoja. In the first large-scale operation of its kind organised by the Ugandan government after the funding void left by aid cuts, authorities announced plans to distribute 9,400 tonnes of relief food over the next two months. The supplies were procured using a 45bn-shilling (£9m) emergency funding allocation, approved by parliament. Sam Engola, minister for disaster preparedness and refugees, launched the aid distribution efforts at a primary school in Lodiko sub-county in Kaabong district on Wednesday. “The president does not want to hear of anyone in Karamoja dying of hunger. I am here to supervise the distribution of this food to the end. I will ensure that everyone receives food. No one will be left behind,” Engola said. View image in fullscreen Sam Engola, with the labour minister, Davinia Esther Anyakun, and minister for Karamoja affairs, John Baptist Lokii, at a school in Lodiki. Photograph: Prime minister's office, Uganda Karamoja is experiencing its most severe dry spell in years. Farmers have lost crops since the last meaningful rainfall was recorded in April – the beginning of the planting season. Angelina Nakiru, a 21-year-old mother of two in Rupa, about 5 miles from Moroto town in Karamoja, said she was struggling to feed her children after all her crops failed. Now she goes early each morning to join other women at a small-scale grinding mill where machines are used to crush rock into powder to wash out gold-bearing ore. The pay is meagre. “The work is dusty and exhausting, but it is the only way I can earn money to buy a cup of maize and beans to feed the children,” Nakiru said. “If I don’t, the children will sleep hungry. Other days when I fail to get the meagre income from the mill, we go to bed on empty stomachs,” she said. “The situation is terrible. People are starving and dying due to hunger. The government must come to the rescue of th