A shortage of necessary funds has prevented urgent funds from getting to the remote Yahukimo regency in Papua, Indonesia, where food shortages have left 55 people dead since November, reports The Jakarta Post.

|TOP|“The aid can only be transported by air, but costs are unbearable,” said Ones Pahebol, regent of Yahukimo, which is located around 800 kilometres from the provincial capital Jayapura.

A trickle of aid arrived at the affected regency on Friday with officials warning that the flow of aid would soon dry up completely if money for transportation was not found soon.

According to a senior Papuan health official, Jacobus Mari, the only food aid and medicines to arrive in Yahukimo had come from the neighbouring regency of Asmat, deemed far from enough to cover the scale of the shortage.

Jacobus added that health officials had also not yet been dispatched to the affected areas due to the bad weather.

A team of two doctors and two nurses has been readied but the bad weather prevented them from going into the famine affected area," said Jacobus, who is based in Sumohai, Yahukimo's capital.

|AD|The central government and the regency administration is currently paying for the shipment of the food and medicine by air to Yahukimo.

Ones said the regency administration needed at least Rp 125 million (US$12,500) a day to purchase the necessary fuel for the relief flights. Government airplanes are currently flying twice a day from Wamena, the nearest large city to Yahukimo.

Lt. Colonel Sarjono, who is heading the relief task force in Wamena, said it would take about a month to transport all of the food and medicine already piled up in Wamena and Dekai.

Ones made an urgent appeal for cash donations to pay for the delivery of food and medicine to the people of Yahukimo.

The donations are also needed to build food barns, install a communication network, and to set up clean water installations in the 32 most at-risk areas in Yahukimo, estimated to cost around another Rp 120 million.

Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadillah Sufari said Monday that the 55 deaths in the Papua province were caused by hunger and malaria, with the initial report in the area indicating that over 100 people are now in critical condition due to the food shortages.