"Can you imagine a country where more than half the inhabitants are children? A population of 11m in which half a million have already died of AIDS and a million children are orphaned?

"A land in which sixty per cent of its people live in poverty and in which, this year to make the unimaginable even worst, the crops have failed?

"You do not have to imagine such a country. It is Malawi today," says Martin Bell, UNICEF special representative for humanitarian emergencies.

Bell, along with UNICEF UK delegates, recently travelled to Malawi to see at first hand how hundred of thousands of children are being affected by the escalating food crisis.

"We have to realise that this crisis will intensify and the Western world cannot simply sit back and watch it happening.

"We need action-- mere lip service and supportive words won't help", said Bell on his return.

There are 3.2m people affected by the crisis in Malawi and at least 45,000 children under five and 185,000 pregnant women are currently receiving nutritional and medical support from UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund. Numbers are expected to increase tenfold by August to a total of 3.2m people and 500,000 children in need of food.

The reasons for the crisis in Malawi are varied.

Droughts and floods have destroyed the maize crops on which the country is reliant and due to a poor harvest the silos are empty and there is nothing stockpiled.

The impact of one in seven infected with HIV/AIDS has been economically and socially disastrous.

And it is the children that are the most vulnerable.

Martin's pleas to the readers of the Evening News draws on his first- hand experiences in Malawi.

He says: "I had expected things to be bad but they were more shocking than I could have anticipated.

"I've seen great human suffering in my time as a reporter, but in Malawi, where children are dying daily from something as simple as a lack of food, the gravity of the situation is extreme .

"In Kasungu hospital in the North of the country, over a hundred mothers, their malnourished children cradled on their backs, were the first to greet us on arrival.

"Some had walked over 70km with no food or water to a hospital where the eight beds are full, and the one doctor has 400 people to tend to.

"Many did not make it. These desperate times have called for desperate remedies.

"I heard of a couple that sold a child for under £3 just to be able to feed their remaining children.

"Others are eating banana roots, grass and leaves and children are digging for mice to sell or to eat.

"Bags of maize fortified with vitamins and sugar were greeted by mothers and children with rapturous songs and clapping - a reassuringly energetic reception in a crisis so debilitating that people are too weak to dig graves for it's victims.

"But there is a huge gap, fatal if it is not filled, between what is promised and what is needed in terms of aid.

"The donations and concern from people of Worcester have been gratefully welcomed by UNICEF.

"Thank you for your response. But Malawi has known nothing like this before.

"And without your further support for UNICEF to provide immediate aid many children will die knowing nothing else but hunger.

"By this October, millions of children will be at risk.

"If we only decide to help them then, it will be too late."