Some 60 million people in southern Africa are facing hunger, disease and death because of a health and humanitarian crisis due to drought and political instability, the United Nations said today.
Mr David Nabarro of the World Health Organisation (WHO) told a news conference that the WHO and other UN bodies estimated some 300,000 people could die in the next six months.
"This is a not just a food crisis. It is a total health and humanitarian crisis as big as anything we have faced over the past decade," Mr Nabarro said.
The worst hit countries were Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe, he said, but others like Angola - which is just emerging from a devastating two-decade civil war - were also badly affected.
And another WHO official, Ms Johanna Larusdottir, told the news conference that if a new El Nino weather phenomenon - the last one of which four years ago brought intense drought to southern and western Africa - "then the situation will be much worse."
An official of the UN childrens' welfare organisation UNICEF, Director of Emergency Operations Mr Nils Kastberg, said that 2.3 million infants and toddlers under five were among the endangered populations.
"These are among the most vulnerable. If they don't have the right food and medical treatment, then they are much more prone to diseases like diarrhoea and pneumonia," he said.