U.N. foresees 300,000 starvation deaths in Africa

GENEVA -- The United Nations said severe food shortages brought on by two years of drought could kill as many as 300,000 people in Southern Africa in the next half year.\n"There is now a severe humanitarian crisis," said Dr. David Nabarro, a senior official of the World Health Organization.\nEarlier this month the United Nations asked for $507 million to buy food for people in the hardest-hit region, which includes Malawi, Zambia, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Swaziland and Mozambique and is home to 60 million people. Of those people, about 12 million will suffer food shortages in the coming year.\n"Our calculations suggest that the crisis in this region could result in up to 300,000 'excess deaths' during the next six months," he said. "This is a conservative estimate"