Emergency food centres in drought-stricken eastern Africa are being overwhelmed by thousands of starving people daily.

Mothers are abandoning their dead or dying children by the roadside, aid workers said yesterday.

Josette Sheeran, executive director of the UN World Food Programme, said at a conference in Rome that a deadly combination of natural disaster and regional conflict had created an emergency affecting more than 12million people.

"We are seeing all the points able to distribute food being completely overwhelmed. Our [stocks of] food are not adequate so we are airlifting in more life-saving supplies.

"We want to make sure the supplies are there along the roads because some of them are becoming roads of death, where mothers are having to abandon their children, who are too weak to make it or who have died along the way," Sheeran said.

A camp in Dadaab, Kenya, that was built for 90000 people was now dealing with 400000.

Ministers and officials met at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome yesterday to discuss how to mobilise aid to alleviate suffering in the worst drought in decades in a region stretching from Somalia to Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti.

The World Food Programme said an extra $360-million (about R2.4-billion) was needed urgently. Oxfam said that another $1-billion was needed.

The World Bank said it was providing more than $500-million for drought victims in addition to $12-million in immediate aid to help the worst hit.

Amid warnings of a disaster spreading across the Horn of Africa, officials said there was still a chance to support people and help them resume their work as farmers and herders. The UN has declared a famine in two Somalian regions.