WFP seeks over 210 million dollars as Ebola spreads in conflict-hit DR Congo

The United Nations World Food Programme, known as WFP, said it needs over 210 million U.S. dollars over the next six months to sustain food aid and relief operations in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where an Ebola outbreak is compounding the hunger and hardship caused by years of armed conflict.

The outbreak has now reached eight provinces, and across the affected areas nearly 3.5 million people are experiencing crisis levels of hunger or above, according to the agency. The disease has disrupted markets and livelihoods, while treatment and isolation measures have left many families unable to feed themselves.

Food assistance has therefore become an integral part of the medical response itself. By ensuring that patients and their relatives are fed, WFP aims to ease the pressure on them to abandon treatment or leave isolation out of sheer hunger, and it is seeking nearly 79 million dollars specifically for that work.

That strategy is already being put into practice, with WFP having delivered more than 740,000 hot meals across nearly 60 treatment and isolation facilities and distributed some 3,000 metric tons of rations to patients' families.

Beyond feeding, the agency's wider response spans flights, the transport of medical supplies and the construction of treatment centers, with a WFP-led logistics group having helped deliver more than 2,600 metric tons of relief supplies by air and road, including medicines and protective equipment.

Yet such operations face constant headwinds in a region where insecurity, poor roads and bad weather have long hampered access to affected communities. Without timely funding, WFP warned, food deliveries and the transport and facilities needed by health teams could be disrupted.

WFP seeks over 210 million dollars as Ebola spreads in conflict-hit DR Congo

The rare footage of a family of three snow leopards, including a cub playing with a stick, was released recently after being captured by infrared cameras at the Helan Mountain National Nature Reserve in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

The footage shows the three snow leopards briefly appeared together on a rocky hillside before the male walked off into the distance. In another clip, the cub played with a stick, walking around and occasionally lying down, while the female watched nearby.

"The cub is now almost the same size as an adult leopard. It is nearly one and a half years old and has adapted very well to the Helan Mountain environment. It is growing up very healthily," said a staff member of the administration bureau of the Helan Mountain National Nature Reserve.

The snow leopard is a first-class nationally protected wild animal in China, and its survival is an important indicator of the health of high-altitude ecosystems.

To protect its habitat, the reserve has continued to track individual snow leopards through field patrols and infrared camera inspections, accumulating rich data for species protection and scientific research.

To date, five individual snow leopards have been monitored in the reserve.

Infrared cameras capture snow leopard family at nature reserve in Inner Mongolia