"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," Nabarro declared.

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, 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 U.N. childrens' welfare organisation UNICEF, Director of Emergency Operations 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.

Another WHO official, Rayana Bu-Haka, said the U.N. was seeking additional funds from the international community - governments and private organisations - for food and health support, but the amount for health had yet to be finalised.

HEALTH A KEY AREA

There had been a good response so far from the European Union and the United States on the food front, but the region's health services desperately needed additional medical personnel, drugs, and other resources, Nabarro said.

Nabarro, Executive Director of WHO's Sustainable Development and Heathy Environments division, said the dry weather and erratic rainfall over the past two years had brought severe food shortages "compounded by instability and population displacement in some countries."

Additionally, governments in the area tried to provide crucial health services on very small budgets - less than $20 a year per head of the population in at least two of the crisis-hit countries.

"If only we could find a way to persuade governments to give much more priority to health and other social services than to investing in military and other activities," he said.

Local health workers were few and far between, many of them having left for other parts of the world where they could earn better salaries, and many others dying in the AIDS epidemic that has swept Africa, he said.

"There are millions of people at risk of extreme poverty and suffering due to lack of food, lack of opportunities to earn cash through agriculture and food production.

"In addition, they are eating seed grain that should be set aside for planting."

Nabarro said the policies of some governments was compounding the crisis - including actions in Zimbabwe's land reform that had resulted in the closing down of farms owned by people of European origin.