November 12, 2019 (JUBA) - Germany has donated $10.9 million to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) to provide food aid to people in flood-hit parts of South Sudan.

A heavily flooded area in a remote part of South Sudan (Getty)

country director for South Sudan, Mathew Hollingworth, who had returned from Pibor, said the flooding is a real emergency that requires an immediate response.

“The World Food Program is saying we need $40 million urgently just to meet the next three months. The need of around 750,000 people who need emergency food assistance, that is only for the next three months,” Hollingworth told VOA’s South Sudan in Focus program.

He said the aid will pay for life-saving humanitarian and resilience activities as well as respond to ongoing flooding.

Nearly a million people in South Sudan have been affected by heavy flooding, the United Nations Office for Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said last week.

Severe floods have reportedly devastated large areas of the country since July, submerging entire communities and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes.

The floods have also limited access to health facilities, nutrition centres, basic services and markets, said OCHA.

Last month, President Salva Kiir declared a state of emergency in greater Bahr al-Ghazal, Greater Upper Nile and the Greater Equatoria regions, and it made an urgent appeal for humanitarian intervention.

The United Nations said last week that it needs $61 million to save lives and ensure the continuity of response to flood victims in South Sudan.

(ST)