Ninety-eight per cent of households in Zimbabwe's drought prone Matabeleland South province will spend World Food Day hungry, according to international relief and development agency World Vision.

The agency, which is providing food and nutritional support to more than 720,000 people during the peak of the hungry season between now and January, said Zimbabwe is facing a countrywide food crisis that is affecting both rural and urban households.

World Vision is also working with children under five who are severely malnourished providing nutritional care which enables them to stay in their homes and receive nutritional supplements within their own community. The agency is training community members to identify early signs of malnutrition and training local health workers in nutritional care.

World Vision Zimbabwe's Humanitarian Emergency Affairs Director, Daniel Muchena said: "We have scaled up relief efforts to curb hunger due to increased vulnerability in households in food insecure districts. Communities have exhausted their coping mechanisms and have resorted to barter trading their livestock for grain. In some areas, the most vulnerable households are relying on wild fruits for survival."

Forty-five-year-old Tsidi Mokoena, a mother of seven, is awaiting registration with a feeding programme in Gwanda District, Matabeleland.

"Due to the chronic food shortages we are experiencing because of very poor harvests, we have resorted to eating one meal a day," she said.

"This is not good for the children, but I have no choice as a mother but to ration the little I have to ensure that there is something for the younger children to eat.

"To survive until now, I have been exchanging one goat for a 20kg bucket of maize grain from traders from Gwanda town. In July I had seven goats, but now I am left with only three. I am afraid of what my children will eat when I trade off the last goat.

"Despite the fact my livelihood depends on a vegetable garden, I can neither grow enough food for my family or raise the exorbitant R300 (£17) that 50kg maize meal is sold for by local wealthy shop owners who import it from South Africa."

Tsidi's 11-year-old daughter Tapelo, who is in Grade Six at a local school in Gungwe village, said: "I only get to eat to my fill at school where there is a schools-based feeding programme. This makes me eager to go to school every day and I dread the weekends because it is a time when I feel faint because of hunger. Hunger feels like a big hole in my stomach that only gets filled when I get to eat food at school."

Around 2.1 million Zimbabweans are currently in need of food . This figure will rise to 5.1 million in early January. World Vision, through the USAID-funded consortium for Southern Africa Food Emergency (C-SAFE), the World Food Program (WFP) and the European Union, is implementing a diverse food relief programme targeting vulnerable groups through Schools Based Feeding, Food Support for the Chronically ill, Institutional Feeding, Safety Net Feeding and Food For Assets interventions.