The UN has warned that despite improvements on the political front, an "acute humanitarian crisis" remains in the Pool region of southern Republic of Congo following a year of hostilities that ended in March 2003. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported on Tuesday that several inter-agency humanitarian assessment missions to the region between May and August revealed that infrastructure had been completely destroyed, sanitation was seriously lacking, the health and nutritional situation was "of grave concern", and children, in particular, were dying of acute malnutrition.