DHAKA (AFP) — Pregnant women, new mothers and children are to be given high nutrition biscuits to help them after a devastating cyclone left thousands without enough food, a UN agency said Wednesday.
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said it would target 46,000 families in some of the areas worst hit by the November 15 storm, the second most powerful cyclone to hit Bangladesh since recordkeeping began.
At least 3,400 people died when the cyclone smashed into Bangladesh's southern coast, leaving 1,700 missing and an estimated 360,000 homeless.
The World Food Programme, working with other organisations, will distribute the high energy biscuits, which also contain proteins and micro-nutrients, UNICEF said in a statement.
UNICEF estimates that around half the 4.7 million people affected by the cyclone are children, 600,000 of them under the age of five.
The impoverished country, where 40 percent of its 144 million people live on less than one dollar a day, has one of the world's highest malnutrition rates.
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