Is there something wrong with the way the world responds to famines, earthquakes and floods? Ask Josephine Kachebe. The 83-year-old grandmother from Tiki Mwiinga community in southern Zambia is among 12 million Southern Africans in desperate need of emergency food aid, according to estimates of the World Food Programme (WFP). In June 2005 the agency appealed for enough food to feed the region through the April 2006 harvest.

But five hungry months later, only a fraction of the target had been met. In November, Mrs. Kachebe told WFP investigators that her only meal that day had consisted of scavenged seed pods, wild nuts and tree roots, which she mixed with ashes into a bitter gruel. The day before, she admitted, she had eaten nothing. If help ever does arrive, she said, “I think it will be too late. I will be dead.”

Cruelly, Mrs. Kachebe’s death — and those of thousands of her friends and neighbours — may be what it takes to spur the world into action. Too often, WFP Executive Director James T. Morris told a US audience in August, donors ignore warnings until the images of the starving appear on television screens. Only then are purse strings loosened and life-sustaining aid sent to the survivors.

“We simply cannot wait until our televisions beam these devastating images into our living rooms to take action,” Mr. Morris declared. “When the warning bell is sounded about imminent disaster… we must listen and act.”