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Food-security emergencies are complex disasters with multiple
root causes. Severe drought
and/or conflict can produce an acute food emergency, whereas
chronic food insecurity is often a reflection of poverty,
a worsening debt crisis, the economic effects at household
level of the HIV/AIDS
pandemic or mismanagement or abuse of water resources. In
such cases, food can be both unavailable (insufficient production)
and inaccessible (distribution problems, beyond consumers'
purchasing power).
Drought
is a slow onset disaster, building up over several years of
failed rains and lost harvests. Rural communities can sometimes
cope with one or two successive rain failures and crop or
cattle losses: the situation becomes a crucial emergency when
they have exhausted all their purchasing resources, food stocks
and usual coping mechanisms.
Poor nutrition, brought on
by food shortages, reduces people's resistance to disease,
and makes outbreaks of preventable diseases likely. Water
shortages, which force people to use polluted water, increase
the risk of waterborne diseases.
Food-security problems may
drive populations to other areas, such as the outskirts of
towns, in search of better conditions. Large settlements of
displaced people can form which again increases the risk of
disease outbreak. In terms of people's livestock, lack of
grazing and water shortages can decimate herds, putting pressure
on families that rely on their existence to provide food and
food products.
Famine and nutritional emergencies
can happen quite suddenly. The Federation carries out a lot
of food distribution in these situations. Occasionally the
Federation carries out supplementary feeding, targeting certain
vulnerable groups suffering from poor nutrition. This often
includes women who are pregnant or breast-feeding and children
under the age of five.
In general, the Red Cross
Red Crescent response to drought and food insecurity prioritizes
food supplies, safe
water and basic sanitation, basic
health services, food security surveillance and nutritional
monitoring and seeds and tools distributions.
Safe water and basic sanitation are a key concern, as wells and other ground water supplies
dry up or become polluted.
Health teams, reinforcing
basic health services of existing clinics, are an important
element of food security response, since illness reduces people's
ability to benefit from what little food is available. The
teams can also take on supervising food distributions, carrying
out nutritional surveillance and monitoring food security.
In certain extreme cases, mobile health teams may be necessary
to reach scattered villages or nomadic camp areas.
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Disaster management
