The United Nations has warned that more than four lakh children in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are severely malnourished and could die within months without emergency intervention.
The UN’s children fund Unicef said, the crisis the latest to hit the poverty-stricken, strife-torn central African country is unfolding in the vast region of Kasai. An 18-month-long combination of violence, mass displacement and slumping agricultural output are having a devastating impact on the very young, it said.
The DRC a country nearly twice the area of Britain, France and Germany combined has a long history of violence, especially in its volatile east.
UNICEF, which has been intervening in the Kasai crisis since January, also said the region’s health infrastructure had been devastated.