Written by Adrienne Klasa | From This Is Africa

As the Ebola virus continues to spread across western Africa, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is warning that the public health emergency could lead to food shortages.

The UN agency is predicting that restrictions on movement as a result of quarantines, port and border closures limiting imports, and negative impacts on economic growth across the affected countries could seriously impact food security.

“Now the focus is on the health issue, but it also may have very serious implications for food security, food availability, and food access in these countries,” says Jean Senahoun, an economist at the FAO.

Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea have been the worst affected by the epidemic, though case numbers are also growing in Nigeria. A separate strain of the virus has also appeared in Democratic Republic of Congo, where the number of cases doubled from 31 to 62 in the week of 9 September. The outbreak is the largest in history, with the death toll now approaching 2300.

Food and commodity prices are already spiking in many local markets across the three coastal countries. The price of cassava, a west African staple, has gone up by as much as 150 percent in some local markets in Liberia in the past weeks. In September, the FAO and the World FoodProgramme approved the distribution of 65,000 tons of food aid to those affected by the outbreak.

Quarantine measures, designed to limit contagion, have also limited the movement of supplies,transport and labourers as the region heads into the September to December harvest season for rice, another regional staple. Limits on movement have also hampered the flow of commodities between surplus rural regions and urban markets, leading to shortages and, for those who can afford it, panic buying.

“The areas with high incidences of [Ebola] are among the most productive regions of Liberia and Sierra Leone,” World Bank president Jim Yong Kim and Paul Farmer, the Harvard professor and co-founder of partners in health, warned in a report.

Read more at This Is Africa