AfricaPress-Tanzania: A CONTINGENT of humanitarian and health workers is expected to jet into the Julius Nyerere International Airport (JNIA) in Dar es Salaam today.
The passenger flight run by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) will arrive from Addis Ababa.
It is the first of its kind since Tanzania suspended international passenger flights from and to the country as part of initiatives to curb the spread of coronavirus.
Operation of the flight is part of the global system of UNFPA to provide logistics support for Covid-19.
WFP Representative in Tanzania Mr Michael Dunford said in a statement that the services ensure that humanitarian organisations are capable of providing human resources and the consignment needed to sustain assistance operations to millions of vulnerable people in the world.
“As the leading UN agency for logistics, WFP has a key role to support the Government and the whole humanitarian community in ensuring supplies and staff are able to reach where they are needed,” he said.
Upon arrival, the personnel will follow government guidance that requires all travellers from outside the country to stay in quarantine for 14 days, to establish whether they have been infected by Covid-19 or not.
The WFP boss added: “Our experience in running logistics operations has allowed WFP to adapt our programmes to provide common logistics services to support the global humanitarian and health response.”
According to him, in Tanzania, flights for humanitarian and health workers are expected to take place every week and once the service is fully operational, WFP would maintain flights to key locations around the world.
The air bridge system is based around Global Humanitarian Response Hubs in Guangzhou (China), Liège (Belgium) and Dubai (UAE) where supplies are being manufactured.
The WFP’s regional hubs are in Ethiopia, Ghana, South Africa, Malaysia, Panama and Dubai.
Flights operate between global and regional hubs, and a fleet of smaller planes move cargo and humanitarian personnel into specific countries, such as Tanzania.
