The cabinet described the situation as "very severe," endorsed President Mwai Kibaki's New Year's Day declaration of the drought as a "national disaster" and said it now considered halting deaths from malnutrition and starvation to be its top priority.

The cabinet "reviewed the food situation in the country and termed as the countrys current number one priority the provision of food for Kenyans who must all be catered for during this famine period," Kibaki's office said in a statement.

"The impact of the drought (is) very severe and would affect millions of Kenyans spread across the country," it said, adding that the cabinet had ordered additional funds provided for relief efforts for the 2.5 million people expected to need aid to survive by the end of next month.

"The cabinet also directed that all available maize in the country be purchased to meet the challenges ahead in the coming months," the statement said, noting that the government had also appointed a task force to urgently examine Kenya's long-term food security requirements.

Red Cross and hospital officials say at least 40 people, mainly children, have died from malnurition and related illnesses since December in Kenya's northeast, which along with neighboring southern Somalia and southeast Ethiopia are the regions worst-affected by two years of chronic drought.

On Friday, Kenyan Red Cross and local officials reported that the dire conditions had spread to another area of the country and that five people -- four children and an adult -- had died of drought-related causes south of Nairobi, in Kajoado district near the Tanzanian border.

"They died of underlying malnourishment," said Dr Samuel Onditi, the senior government physician in the district. "Drought is on the increase."

"The situation is very bad," said Sandra Mulluka of the Red Cross.

In addition to the human toll hundreds of thousands of cows, goats and camels have perished, severely hurting the area's livestock-dependent pastoralist population.

Shortly before the Kenyan statement was released, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned that 11 million people in Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti and Ethiopia were on the brink of starvation in the Horn of Africa.

In a "special alert" issued at its Rome headquarters, the FAO urged international donors to respond immediately to appeals for emergency assistance throughout the Horn of Africa.

It said food shortages were "particularly grave" in anarchic Somalia said that the situation was was "very serious" in pastoral areas of Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya.

The FAO said the Kenyan government had asked for about 150 million dollars over the next six months but warned that more aid was needed to provide people and animals with water, restock herds and supply seeds to farmers.

On Thursday, at least three foreign relief organizations -- the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Action Against Hunger (AAH) and World Vision -- said emergency interventions were needed in northeast Kenya.

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