Charity feeding 1,000 people a day after Nepal floods

A charity has said it is struggling to reach starving families in Nepal, a week after the devastating floods destroyed thousands of homes and killed more than 1,300 people.

Feed the Hungry has 25 volunteers on the ground delivering rice and flour to villages cut off by the floods more than a week ago.

But is said there were thousands more people it has not been able to reach, with many roads unpassable, meaning it is taking hours to reach places only a few kilometres away.

"After three days we went to a village and we met several people. They were saying that they were starving. Children were crying for the food", said Pastor Ruben Rasaili, who is running the team in Nepal.

Rasaili said he had been receiving calls from people begging them for help, with one man saying he wished he had died in the floods.

"I said 'why?', and the man replied 'because any how we are going to die, because nobody cares for us. We don't have food to eat. We are starving.'"

The charity was already working on the ground in Nepal but has now scaled up its operations with a food kitchen feeding 1,000 people a day.

"We felt we have to have the feeding centre", Rasaili continued, "because, nobody has the cooking utensils, so if we provide them emergency aid like rice, and food items, they don't have anything to cook with."

"They don't have a place to live, they don't have food to eat, they don't have any business, they don't have any clothes to wear. They don't have anything".

Another 400 families who do have access to a kitchen are also being given food aid packs.

But the logistics of getting that aid to the families has proved a challenge after the floods washed away the roads.

One of the charity's trucks took 8 hours to travel 40 kilometres to deliver food.

"There's no access to roads, they have to [try to] make the road by themselves." Rasaili said.

The pastor said the work in Nepal had been hard on the volunteers too.

"Still every day the helicopter goes, they are bringing the dead bodies, and they are bringing the injured people.

"News are silent, but the death rate is growing day by day".

Feed the Hungry is based in Coventry and has been running since 2005.

It continues to support families facing hunger in the Midlands, but now also supports disaster relief and feeds over 645,000 children around the world in 29 countries.

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