Irish relief agency Concern has described the situation in western Sudan as "a race against time" in which hundreds of thousands of people will die unless they get food aid in the next three months.
This woman walked for six hours to a clinic to seek medical assistance for her severely malnourished son only find no help available
Father Jack Finucane, who will oversee one of the largest missions ever carried out by the organisation in the province of Darfur, said: "Right now it's a matter of saving lives."
He said the situation represented a "huge emergency and if the people are not got to in the next three months, they will not be alive".
Over one million people have been displaced in Darfur following violence by the Government-backed Arab militiamen, known as Janjaweed, against local black Africans.
The United Nations has declared the situation the world's worst humanitarian crisis, as villages have been levelled and thousands of people have been killed or raped. Up to 30,000 people may have died so far and more than 100,000 have fled to neighbouring Chad, UN figures show.
Because of the number of people involved, the remoteness of the region and the little or no infrastructure, Concern says it is being forced to operate its own "food pipeline" at a cost of €10 million over 12 months.
It plans to airlift 2,000 metric tonnes of special nutritional food to feed thousands of malnourished children.
Concern's emergency co-ordinator, Mr Ros O'Sullivan, who has spent six weeks in Darfur assessing the situation, said: "Concern's emergency intervention will target some 300,000 internally displaced and war-affected people in three localities in Western Darfur."
Mr O'Sullivan said: "We will be covering their nutrition, sanitation and shelter needs. The rainy season has started and there is a real risk that the deplorable conditions in the camps could lead to the outbreak of major diseases such as cholera.
"It is a race against time if lives are to be saved".
Mr O'Sullivan told the story of one woman (see picture) who had walked for six hours to a clinic to seek medical assistance for her severely malnourished son only find no help available.
He said 50 per cent of the shelters in one camp had been wiped out by torrential rains.
Relief agencies had lost a bit of ground in terms of pre-positioning aid, he claimed, and given the distances involved - Darfur is 2,000 miles from the capital Khartoum - the intervention would be costly, but he said "we have no choice".
Concern's chief executive, Mr Tom Arnold, said the organisation hoped to receive in the region of €2 million from the Government in funding for the mission.
Mr Arnold said they will also be seeking funding from the US government, the EU and the British government.
He said: "We will add this to the very generous response (€1.4 million) which we have already received from the Irish public."
The Minister of State for Development Co-operation and Human Rights, Mr Tom Kitt, is travelling to Darfur today.
Mr Kitt said he would attempt to verify claims by the Khartoum government that it is disarming the Arab militias responsible for the violence.
