Nairobi — United Nations is appealing for Sh210 million (US$2.8 million) to provide essential supplies to refugees and respond to possible disease outbreaks in camps threatened by floods in Kenya.

The extra funds from donors, said the UNHCR, is required to help over 300,000 refugees at Kakuma and Dadaab camps threatened by flooding.

UNHCR's spokesperson, Andrej Mahecic, said much of the money would be used to pre-position essential items such as fuel, blankets and plastic sheets, and to respond to possible outbreaks of disease.

He said United Nations High Commissioner Refugees has already begun to make engineering improvements in Kakuma camp in north-western Kenya and the Dadaab camp in the east.

He said UNHCR feared El Nino rains may now threaten the 338,000 mostly Somali refugees in the two camps, which in any case usually are flooded for three months every year.

He said the agency began digging trenches and placing sandbags around hospitals, boreholes and other strategic locations in both camps when the heavy rains began three weeks ago.

Located 90 kilometres from border with Somalia, Dadaab is the largest refugee site in the world. It is a complex of three camps built for 90,000 people but today is home to over three times that number.

Mr Mahecic said UN has been repairing culverts on seasonal riverbeds that connect different parts of three camps at Dadaab.

Without the measures, many sections of the camps would have been inundated.

"We are also preparing to locate, to higher ground within the camps, refugees who might be worst affected by floods, particularly chronically ill, disabled people, elderly and children and teenagers," he said on.

In order to protect refugees in Kakuma, the camp harder hit by floods in the past, UNHCR has diverted two seasonal rivers, the Tarach and Lodoket, that have often flooded lower grounds.

The worst flooding in Kakuma was in May 2003 when some 16,800 refugees saw their homes destroyed. A number of latrines overflowed and collapsed, leading to spreading of water-bone diseases.

The overcrowded Dadaab complex, home to more refugees than any other site in the world, last experienced severe flooding in 2006.