The World Food Programme will be forced to stop providing vital food aid in Myanmar, "because of a shortfall in funding" says Michael Dumford, head of operations for the agency in the war-torn country. "We had aspirations to be reaching up to 1.1 million people." The lack of funding is down to donors not meeting WFP's requirements. "This includes the US, but it's definitely not only the US," says Dumford.
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00:00Unfortunately the World Food Programme is forced to make very dramatic reductions in the number
00:05of people that we are reaching because we simply do not have the levels of funding required.
00:10We had aspirations to be reaching up to 1.1 million people but because of a shortfall in funding
00:18we are particularly squeezed and this translates to reaching less people. We are short of the
00:26funding because of a whole range of different donors have not been able to meet our requirements.
00:32This includes the US but it's definitely not only the US. The situation in Myanmar continues to
00:39deteriorate. We estimate that there could be over 15 million people who are acutely food insecure.
00:47This is driven by conflict, this is caused by displacement, this is caused by economic hardship
00:54and these people desperately need support from WFP and the international community if we are
00:59going to meet their basic requirements. Countries such as Ukraine and Gaza and Sudan have a higher
01:07profile than Myanmar at the moment and so a lot of funding has gone towards those operations
01:14but when you look at the percentage of the population acutely hungry, very few of them have
01:21needs as great as Myanmar at present.