Harare - Acute child malnutrition in parts of Zimbabwe has increased by almost two-thirds compared to last year, Britain's Save the Children aid agency said Saturday. The organization made the claim in a report in which it appealed for world donors to increase aid to the once prosperous Southern African nation.
The report said that some children were "wasting away from lack of food."
"There is no excuse for failing to provide this food. The innocent people of Zimbabwe should not be made to suffer for a political situation that is out of their control," said Lynn Walker, programmes director for Save the Children in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe is facing its worst economic and humanitarian crisis since its independence from Great Britain 28 years ago.
There are acute shortages of all essentials such as cash, fuel, medical drugs, electricity and food.
President Robert Mugabe blames the crisis on the sanctions imposed on him and his cronies by the West for disregarding human rights, while his critics attribute the crisis to his economic policies.
Save the Children echoed the United Nations in saying 5 million Zimbabweans - out of a population of about 12 million - were in need of food aid.
It said it needed 18,000 tons of aid for January.
"We have already been forced to reduce the rations of emergency food we are delivering because there isn't enough to go around. If, as we fear, the food aid pipeline into Zimbabwe begins to fail in the new year, the millions of people who rely on emergency food aid will suffer," the Save the Children report said.
Following a decade of economic woes, a cholera epidemic is now raging fuelled by the collapse of Zimbabwe's health, sanitation and water services.
The epidemic has claimed more than 1,100 lives and infected more than 20,000 people since its outbreak in August.
Health experts have warned that the water-borne disease could infect more than 60,000 unless its spread is halted.
