Caritas staff in rural Zimbabwe are reporting that families are mixing their dwindling food supplies with cow dung to stave off hunger.

Caritas Internationalis Secretary General Lesley-Anne Knight said, “Our staff say that people in Zimbabwe are dropping dead on the streets from Cholera. They’ve witnessed people mixing cow dung with what’s left of their food to make it go further. This is poverty at its most dehumanising.”

A Caritas survey in the areas it works in October found 70 to 90 percent of households going hungry depending on the area and the rest on the brink of starving. At least 5.1 million people are facing starvation out of a population of 13 million people. Nearly 14,000 cases of Cholera have been reported.