More than 300 people have been admitted to several North Eastern Province hospitals suffering from measles.
Four of them are children who contracted the disease last week and are at Ijara District Hospital in critical condition, provincial medical boss Omar Ahmed said.
Most of the patients are in hospitals in Garissa, Wajir, Mandera and Ijara.
Dr Ahmed said the disease had spread from central and southern regions of Somalia, where an outbreak of the disease has been reported due to poor immunisation programmes.
Children were more vulnerable to infections due to the high rate of malnutrition after prolonged famine.
The official blamed the nomadic lifestyle, severe drought, illiteracy and low impact of immunisation campaigns for the outbreak.
The Government will next month begin campaigns against measles and polio to stop its spread.
The outbreak comes barely a month after 20 people, the majority of them children, died and 200 more admitted to hospital with measles-related complications in Garissa and Ijara.
Meanwhile, a new malaria drug for children aged five years and below has been registered by the Health ministry.
The artemisinin-based combination therapy suspension, known as Coartesiane, has been found to be effective in treating children weighing below 10 kilogrammes, Dafra Pharma business manager (East Africa) Mboya Owino said yesterday.
Speaking in Nairobi, Dr Owino said the new suspension drug is a combination therapy of Artemether and Lumefantrine.
Malaria kills 90 children in Kenya daily – which translates to 34,000 children annually. It is the leading cause of deaths among pregnant women.
Separately, a lorry driver died of cholera in Lokichogio in Turkana District.
Catholic Justice and Peace Commission coordinator Peter Moru said he might have contracted the disease in Kapoeta, Southern Sudan, where 20 people have died of the disease.
Mr Wafula Wasike, who was at International Community of Red Cross Hospital in Lopiding, was transporting goods to Buma and is said to have drunk untreated water in the area after his lorry broke down. | 
