If you’ve never met someone facing severe hunger, let me introduce you to Demisse Mada.

Demisse is a three-year-old boy living in a highland village in southern Ethiopia. Actually the word living doesn’t seem right because it’s not life that he’s experiencing but an existence and a harrowing one at that.

Lack of food has left Demisse devoid of the normal signs of life you might expect to find in a three-year-old.

He does not play, run around or laugh. In fact he barely moves at all. Hunger has deprived his tiny frame of energy.

Most of the time we are with his family he stands rooted to the spot, looking ahead, his face a study of seriousness beyond his years.

His belly is bloated, most likely caused by intestinal worms, and his legs are desperately thin. Press three of your fingers together and they will be wider than one of Demisse’s legs.

A member of our team, who has seen many malnourished children in the course of his worldwide work, assesses that Demisse is showing the symptoms of marasmus – or acute wasting.

He classifies the boy as severely malnourished which is about as bad as it gets in hunger terms.

One of the most striking legacies of the malnutrition is that Demisse doesn’t smile. Not once in the several hours we are with his family. It’s not right but then again nor is the situation that he and his family face.

Right now this little boy and tens of thousands of young children like him are enduring a food disaster that is affecting large tracts of Ethiopia.

Tearfund has been working with church partners over the last few months to respond to this crisis, helping to feed 15,000 people, but it is becoming clear that the scale of the response needs to be stepped up to match the growing need for help.

Short season rains due earlier this year failed to fall in sufficient quantity, if at all, or at the right time, resulting in an extended drought.