Vietnam's Flooded Areas Face Hunger Until Early 2008

About one million people face food shortages in central Vietnam until the rice harvest early next year after the worst floods in decades, government officials said on Friday.

Seventy-four people have died and nine are missing and feared dead after a storm dumped rains of up to 1.4 metres (4.6 feet) during the first 10 days of August in Ha Tinh and Quang Binh provinces.

"The storm has caused the most terrible floods in the past 50 years," an official from Ha Tinh's Agriculture Department said at a government meeting to assess the damage.

The province reported 29 deaths, 14 of them children.

"We are short of food until the new crop comes in next April," he told Vietnamese officials, diplomats and representatives from foreign non-governmental organisations.

Residents in the neighbouring province of Quang Binh, where 15 died, have also lost all food stocks and fresh rice supplies could only come next March, a Quang Binh official said.

The government has sent 3,000 tonnes of rice from state warehouses to Ha Tinh and Quang Binh, but officials said that without other food, the rice could last only 10 days.

The government's Committee for Flood and Storm Control put the economic losses from floods in the central provinces and the Central Highlands coffee belt at 2 trillion dong ($124 million).

Vietnamese officials have appealed for international help, saying apart from food and medical aid, victims needed mosquito nets, blankets, clothes and disinfectants as water sources were polluted.

The government did not issue a damage report on the Central Highlands coffee crop but it said nearly 4,500 ha (11,000 acres) of both coffee and rubber had been destroyed in three coffee growing provinces of Daklak, Dak Nong and Gia Lai.

The region has 450,000 ha (1.11 million acres) of coffee under plantation. It supplies up to 90 percent of Vietnam's coffee output, which traders estimated at 21 million bags from the previous harvest that ended in January.

Harvesting of the next crop is due to start from late October.

Storms and typhoons often strike Vietnam from August to October. Last year, 10 storms hit the country and about 500 people were killed by floods and landslides, the government said.