Food prices have risen by an average of 24 percent across the three countries worst hit by the Ebola outbreak, forcing some families to reduce their intake to one meal a day, the World Food Program (WFP) said on Friday.
The food-producing regions of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia in West Africa have been severely affected by the worst outbreak on record of the viral hemorrhagic fever that has killed nearly 4,500 people.
Infection rates in the food-producing zones of Kenema and Kailahun in Sierra Leone, Lofa and Bong County in Liberia and Guéckédou in Guinea are among the highest in the region. Hundreds of farmers have died.
Decisions by the three governments to quarantine districts and restrict movements to contain the spread of the virus have also disrupted markets and led to food scarcity and panic buying, further pushing up prices, WFP and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have said.
"Prices have risen by an average of 24 percent," said WFP spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs, adding that an assessment of major markets had shown prices of basic commodities were rising in Guinea and Liberia as well as in neighboring Sierra Leone.
In the Liberian capital Monrovia, prices of cassava and imported rice, the main staple food, have jumped by 30 percent.
"Planting and harvesting are being disrupted with implications for food supply further down the line. There is a high risk that prices will continue to increase during the coming harvest season," Byrs told Reuters.
The Ebola outbreak in Senegal is officially over but the country remains vulnerable to further cases of the deadly disease being imported, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.
Byrs said WFP was carrying out a food security survey remotely using mobile phones to investigate the impact of the crisis on 2,400 families across the three countries.
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The first round of the survey of 800 people in Sierra Leone's eastern districts of Kailahun and Kenema showed that people are worse off in terms of food security, despite being the main producing areas.
"The survey showed that certain families have cut down to one meal a day or that people are eating food that costs less, such as cassava instead of rice," said Byrs.
The WFP began distributing food on Friday to 265,000 people in the Waterloo suburb near Sierra Leone's capital of Freetown, an area that has recorded high infection rates, the WFP said.
"The aim of the distribution is to stabilize quarantined families by giving them enough to eat so that they do not leave their homes to look for food," it said in a statement.
The aid, which included rice, pulses, vegetable oil and salt, should meet families' needs for one month, WFP added.
The WFP also said it was procuring 74 vehicles including ambulances, mortuary vehicles and pick-up trucks, funded by the World Bank, to help tackle the crisis. A first batch of 30 vehicles is expected to arrive by air in Sierra Leone on Saturday.
"We have enough evidence now to know that the best ambulance is not a closed ambulance, it's a pick-up. Why is it better to have a pick-up? The driver is protected. The person can be put in the back on a stretcher," WHO's Isabelle Nuttall told a news briefing on Thursday.