Without quick food aid, thousands of children in Myanmar face starvation, Save the Children officials said Sunday, reports The Wall Street Journal.

“We are extremely worried that many children in the affected areas are now suffering from severe acute undernourishment, the most serious level of hunger,” said Jasmine Whitbread, who heads the charity’s operation in Britain.

More than 50 philanthropists and financial advisers convened an emergency meeting Friday at the San Francisco Foundation to brainstorm effective ways to get relief to cyclone victims in Burma despite staunch resistance from the Burmese government, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

The San Francisco Foundation’s chief executive, Sandra Hernandez, focused on the Foundation for the People of Burma, in San Francisco, and other small U.S. charities with strong ties to grassroots organizations in Burma whose staff members have been better able to get around government restrictions and have delivered rice, medicine, water-purification tablets, and tarps to 14,000 families in remote villages.