The Horn of Africa famine, which has killed tens of thousands of people, could soon spread to six more regions, the UN humanitarian relief chief said Monday.
Weakened children and adults are dying as they walk to relief camps and an extra $1.4 billion is needed to stop the famine getting out of control, said Valeria Amos, UN under secretary general and emergency relief coordinator.
Some "12.4 million people in Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and Djibouti are in dire need of help and the situation is getting worse," Amos told a press briefing.
Famine was declared in two Somali regions last month. "If we are not able to really handle it now, it could spread to five or six other regions inside Somalia," Amos said in comments to AFP.
She called for a "massive response" to stop the spread of the famine.
"Tens of thousands of Somalis have already died and hundreds of thousands face starvation with consequences for the entire region," Amos added.
About $1 billion has already been promised by the international community but Amos said the United Nations "urgently needs another $1.4 billion to save lives."
About 3.7 million people in Somalia, 4.5 million in Ethiopia, 3.7 million in Kenya and hundreds of thousands in Djibouti need help, the UN official said.
The UN is unable to give a specific death toll for the famine because of the difficulty in getting information from remote areas of Somalia, many of which are controlled by Islamist insurgents battling the government.
"These are long distances and people in a malnourished state, particularly children, are dying as they have been walking to get to food," Amos told AFP.
"If we can help prevent people already in a severely weakened state from having to walk those long distances we will stop a lot of the deaths," she added.
Amos said small farmers in Ethiopia were desperate for help as the worst drought in 60 years had killed their livestock and so they had no food and no money to buy food.
It was not clear if the drought has spread to the isolated state of Eritrea, Amos said, even though the government has said there are no food shortages.
Weather analyses quoted by the US government suggest that the drought is hitting Eritrea.
