UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said there was not a "second to lose" if the world was to save hundreds of thousands of people in Sudan's conflict-ravaged Darfur region from starvation and disease. "The region is undergoing the worst humanitarian crisis gripping the planet," Annan said in an opinion piece in the French daily Le Figaro published on Friday. "Without massive and immediate support relief organisations will not be able to continue their work, and hunger, malnutrition and sickness will claim hundreds of thousands of victims," he wrote.