26 Aug 2009
Almost 8 million people in Kenya and Somalia are in need of emergency aid amid drought, rising food prices and conflict in East Africa, the UN has warned.

An assessment by the World Food Program (WFP) has found out that half of the Somali people need food aid. It has also appealed for $230 million in emergency aid to feed 3.8 million Kenyans over six months.

"Red lights are flashing across the country," Burkard Oberle, WFP Kenya Country Director, said in a statement. "People are already going hungry, malnutrition is preying on more and more young children, cattle are dying."

The WFP said that many parts of Kenya had suffered from failed rains during the last three of four rainy seasons and that the situation was only likely to deteriorate.

Somalia is facing an even more acute crisis, according to the UN's Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit for Somalia (FSNAU).

Almost 1.5 million Somalis have abandoned their homes to live in camps for the internally displaced. Hundreds of thousands more have fled abroad, many of whom to the Dadaab refugee complex in Kenya.


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