World Food Programme boosts operations to Ebola-hit W.Africa

DAKAR: The World Food Programme is planning to boost its emergency aid in the west of Africa, saying the region faces a "tsunami" of need caused by the Ebola outbreak.

"We know how to do conflict, we know how to do earthquakes and we know how to do tsunamis. This is like a tsunami that is already at its peak," said Denise Brown, the WFP's regional director for west Africa.

Speaking in Dakar after returning from Liberia and Sierra Leone -- the countries most seriously affected by the outbreak -- she said there was a "need to scale up" to ensure that air access, materials, body bags, and food were reaching those most in need.

"What we saw when we were there is that the health structures are massively overwhelmed."

She said the WFP has "never responded in this scale to this kind of crisis" before, with the added complication that many areas -- such as the vast West Point slum in Liberia's capital Monrovia -- are quarantined, cutting off access to food.