TNT Express airlifts food aid for Somalia
TNT Express today uplifted 45 tons of emergency food aid to Nairobi, Kenya, to help the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) feed thousands of children in neighbouring Somalia.
A Boeing 767 aircraft containing more than 3,000 boxes of supplementary plumpy, a nutrition product for malnourished children, took off today at 10.00am CET from TNT’s hub in Liege, Belgium. The plane is expected to land in Nairobi today at 6.50pm CET. The aid arriving in Kenya will be moved later to the affected areas in Somalia for distribution.
Today’s shipment should enable WFP to treat 6,000 malnourished children for three months as part of the agency’s programme to feed 1.5m people in Somalia.
Supplementary plumpy, a peanut-based paste packed with vitamins, can be eaten straight from the bag without added water, a rare resource in drought-stricken Somalia. The sweet paste provides 500 calories per each 92-gram (3.25 ounces) sachet. The recommended daily dose of supplementary plumpy is about 75 kcal / day / kg, or 1 sachet per day for a child weighing 7 kg.
The United Nations has declared famine in five regions of Somalia. The number of people in need of lifesaving assistance is now 3.7m, out of a population of 7.5m. WFP is already feeding 1.5m people in the northern and central parts of Somalia and in Mogadishu which continues to fill up with those fleeing the famine zone. More than 2m people in need of food aid are currently inaccessible because of insecurity. Staple cereal prices are at record levels. Somalia has some of the highest malnutrition rates in the world with one in four children acutely malnourished in the south (source: WFP).
TNT Express has been a transport and logistics partner of WFP since 2002, offering in-kind support in the form of airlifts, warehouses and logistics experts.
