Two British officials, representing the consortium of charities operating inside East Pakistan, are due to fly out to Dacca today. Their task will be to assess the likely extent of the famine which is believed to be inevitable in East Pakistan later this year, and to report on how the British charities could best respond.

Inside East Pakistan, the two, Mr Vernon Littlewood of Christian Aid and Mr Kenneth Bennett of Oxfam, will be linking up with Mr Ian MacDonald of War on Want, who has been organizing an improvized agricultural programme in the area hit by last November's cyclone.

The United Nations’ appeal to governments for $28m (about £11m) to prevent famine has so far raised only $4m. Of this Britain has given £1m, and the balance has come from the United States. France and Canada.

Because this fund is so desperately small compared with the scale of the problem—there are estimated to be at least five million people at risk—Christian Aid has just taken the exceptional course of giving £100,000 of its own money to the United Nations fund, although the fund was primarily aimed at governments.