A little-known disease, noma, continues to kill children in Africa due to poverty, a top World Health Organisation (WHO) official said at an African health conference in Nairobi on Wednesday.

"Noma, known in Africa as the "face of poverty", still kills African children because their families are too poor to afford antibiotics, anti-septics and improving nutrition to prevent its gangrenous phase," the WHO regional director for Africa, Ibrahim Samba said in a statement.

"However, noma stands out as it represents a special challenge, an avoidable tragedy of poverty and underdevelopment," said the statement delivered at the opening of a three-day regional conference to promote oral health in Africa.

The conference aims at sensitising political leaders to the link between oral and systematic health and to generally raise awareness on oral health issues in the region.

Noma is a disorder that destroys mucous membranes of the mouth, and later other tissues, that occurs in malnourished children in areas of poor sanitation.

"Oral disease is a serious problem that is not only a matter of oral hygiene and health, but can also be a precursor to other potential life-theatening illnesses," the joint organisers, World Dental Federation and WHO, said in a statement.

The statement said that "general development, as well as health and oral health indicators in the African region, are among the lowest in the world and oral diseases, such as dental caries, oral cancer, periodontal and noma, impact significantly on general health."

"There is a disproportionate number and prevalence of oral diseases in the African region, particularly dental caries, periodontal disease, oral cancers and maxillo trauma, as well as oral manifestations of the deadly HIV/AIDS that has infected about 28 million Africans," Samba added.

Kenyan health ministry spokesman Julius Ndegwa told AFP that the meeting would be attended by up to 13 African ministers of health or finance, as well as the continent's top health officials - Sapa-AFP.