300,000 face death in next six months, warns WHO

Robert Evans, Geneva

"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," David Nabarro of the World Health Organisation (WHO) 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.