Abuja — The World Food Programme (WFP) yesterday described the current worldwide high food prices as a "silent tsunami."

It said in a statement that the situation has created the biggest challenge the agency had faced in its 45-year history.

According to the statement, the current high prices is affecting more people on every continent and destroying even more livelihoods.

It said that nutrition losses would hurt children for a lifetime.

"This is the new face of hunger – the millions of people who were not in the urgent hunger category six months ago now are," the WFP executive director, Josette Sheeran, stated.

"The response calls for large-scale, high-level action by the global community, focused on emergency and longer-term solutions," she said.

A WFP analysis of the situation supported World Bank estimates that about 100 million people had been "pushed deeper into poverty by the high food prices."

The WFP statistics on the number of people who might have urgent hunger needs would be released next week.

Comparing the situation to the 2004 tsunami which hit the Indian Ocean, leaving quarter of a million dead and about 10 million more destitute, the statement said the food price challenge required a global response.

"What we are seeing now is affecting more people on every continent, destroying even more livelihoods and the nutrition losses will hurt children for a lifetime," the WFP director said.

She, therefore, called for a comprehensive approach where all parties, from governments to UN agencies and NGOs, would work together.

The statement said that in the short-term the WFP would seek full funding for targeted food safety nets and mother-child health programmes in extreme situations.

It would also scale up school feeding and use it as a platform for urgent, nutritional interventions, the statement said.

In the medium term, WFP will offer its huge logistics capacity to support life-saving distribution networks.

"Every hour of the day, WFP has 30 ships on the high seas, 5,000 trucks on the ground and 70 aircraft in the sky, delivering food to the hungry.

"It will also expand cash and voucher programmes and support local purchases from small farmers, helping them to afford inputs and sustain livelihoods," the statement said.

The longer term approach, it said, would be to support policy reform and provide advice and technical support to governments engaging in agricultural development programmes.

It would also pursue local purchase contracts that could help farmers increase investment and yields.

Sheeran added that partnerships would play a critical role in fighting this emergency.

The UN agency has decided to suspend school feeding to 450,000 children with effect from May in Cambodia, unless new funding could be found.

The statement said that the agency's representatives in 78 countries around the world were facing similar difficult choices.