In August 2017, World Vision and WFP, were the first humanitarian agencies to begin food distributions in Kasai Centrale region. To date, they have reached over 55,000 people. They plan to scale up the response to meet the needs of over 100,000 by the end of the year.
Premier spoke to Sarah Pickwick, World Vision UK's Senior Conflict Advisor.
Regarding hunger worldwide she said: "the numbers are incredibly high - 850 million people don't have enough food to eat. And I think World Food Day really helps to shine a light on all the people who are going to sleep at night, especially children, who don't have enough nutritious food."
When asked what causes hunger she replied: "There are many different causes of why people are hungry across the globe" but regarding the Kasai province, it is "because of conflict - the violence erupted about a year ago and over 1.4 million people had to flee from their homes".
Due to the conflict, people are finding it extremely difficult to find anythign to eat: "they're foraging for fruit and nuts and seeds...even now that the violence has reduced and people are returning home they're returning home to burnt homes, destroyed crops, livestock gone. They've eaten all they have and they don't have money to buy more.
"The situation is often very acute in areas where there is conflict because they have to flee and they leave everything, they can't farm their land and take care of their livestock".
"The situation is particularly dire for those people and needs are incredibly high and there's a really short window of time often to get that food in."
Sarah Pickwick spoke to Premier's Cara Bentley:
Gwyn Williams from Feed the Hungry UK spoke about World Food Day to Premier's Alex Williams on the News Hour. He started by asking whether the situation had got worse: