DAKAR, Dec 5 (Reuters) - The United Nations appealed on Tuesday for $309 million worth of humanitarian aid next year for 16 West African countries, some of the poorest in the world.

U.N. officials said the funds were needed to cover shortages of food, drinking water, medicine and to treat sexual abuse, mainly in the arid Sahel region just south of the Sahara.

Every year, some 300,000 children under five years old die from malnutrition in the region, suffering one of the worst droughts in recorded history.

"We have the power to decide who will escape the cycle of death by hunger, disease or malnutrition," Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, UN Representative for West Africa, said at the launch of the annual appeal in the Senegalese capital Dakar.

"Any support we provide is support for life."

Some 250 million people live in West Africa. The United Nations said children in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger would be mostly affected by malnutrition.

Humanitarian officials say conditions in Ivory Coast, once the economic hub of the region, are complicated by a civil conflict which divides the country into a rebel-held north and a government controlled south -- affecting many basic services.

"The constant rise in humanitarian appeals for West Africa from 97 million dollars in 2004 to more than 300 million in 2007 must draw our attention" said Herve Ludovis de Lys, head of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for West Africa.

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