GUATEMALA CITY, Sept. 29 (UPI) -- The worst drought in 30 years in Guatemala's "dry corridor" along the Pacific Ocean has destroyed the region's crops and triggered hunger, officials say.
The drought has also claimed the lives of more than 12 children in a situation that President Alvaro Colom has declared to be a "public calamity" while joining the United Nations in an urgent appeal for food aid, The Miami Herald reported Tuesday.
Officials of the World Food Program and other relief groups have warned that they will run out of funds to help Guatemala by the end of September if more money is not made available before then. They told the Herald that malnutrition has long been a major problem in Guatemala, especially in rural parts of the country where most residents are poor and illiterate.
"The problem of malnutrition won't be in just the dry corridor but in the whole country,'' Luis Enrique Monterroso, a leading local nutritionist, told the newspaper. "There are indicators that next year will be worse.''
