Harvest food and the arrival of aid from governments and groups like LWR have reportedly checked the starvation that we glimpsed in pictures last summer. That improvement is today's good news. The bad news will come again tomorrow. In April this harvest will run out the way last year's did, and the cycle will start again. Outside aid must be ready.
Winter is but a cold reprise.
And even the reprise is not for all. Yet what they ship for eight centers might be shared among 20 institutions. Vitamins sufficient for 20 children may be administered to 50 instead. Such dilution of aid, we were told by those monitoring, is a bigger problem than diversion. At a county hospital of 350 beds the medicine cabinet has aspirin and expired antibiotics.