Ebola outbreak is worsening food insecurity in eastern Congo, UN agency chief warns

BUNIA, Congo -- The Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo is worsening food insecurity in a country already battling with one of the world's largest humanitarian crises, the head of the U.N. food agency told The Associated Press on Wednesday.Speaking during a visit to Ituri province, Carl Skau, acting executive director of the World Food Program, described the outbreak as a “crisis on top of a crisis” that has compounded a catastrophic situation with over five million Congolese already experiencing emergency-level food insecurity.A long-running conflict in eastern Congo has driven nearly 10 million people into crisis or emergency levels of hunger, with Ituri province — the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak — among the most affected with 1.9 million of them, according to the WFP.Across some 48 health zones affected with Ebola, more than 2.7 million people face acute food insecurity, including 628,000 in emergency conditions, it added.“Now with Ebola crisis, this is getting worse. Markets are impacted, supply routes are impacted and so people are struggling even more to have enough to eat,” Skau told the AP.The ongoing Ebola outbreak, considered the fastest in history, has recorded 3,360 con...