Senior UN health official slams international community over Darfur aid
GENEVA, Oct 15 (AFP) — A senior World Health Organisation (WHO) official sharply criticised the shortfall in international aid for Sudan’s strife-torn region of Darfur, despite the amount of political and media attention devoted to the crisis.
The WHO’s top crisis envoy, David Nabarro, estimated that 70,000 people in Darfur had died since March from disease or malnutrition.
“We still are not able to get the resources we need collectively to mount the response that is required to bring death rates down to the level that is acceptable,” Nabarro told journalists Friday.
Aid agencies had only received half of the 300 million dollars needed to cope with disease, malnutrition, poor shelter and sanitation for the 1.4 million displaced in the region and another 200,000 refugees in neighbouring Chad.
“When you are dealing with an issue where you can sense the suffering, the despair and hopelessness of so many people, and you perceive that there is a potentially receptive international community, it’s amazing that we still can’t seem to get the money that is required,” Nabarro said.
“It’s covered well in French newspapers, in Japanese newspapers and other countries in Europe and the United States,” he added, pointing to the high degree of political attention.
“But the conversion of information reaching the politicians into resources that come to us isn’t adequate, and the price is measured in death.”
Although the mortality rate had fallen back to the levels recorded in June, up to 10,000 people were still dying a month in Darfur, an excessively high death rate even for a humanitarian crisis, according to the WHO.
Nabarro said the data did not include deaths due to fighting and emphasised that the biggest problem for the aid effort was a lack of resources.
Surveys over the past month suggested that dysentery, hepatitis E and cholera were being kept in check, but international aid was not up to the sprawling size of Darfur, an area the size of France.
“We’ve been trying to get to these camps with four-wheel drive vehicles that break down or get stuck in the mud when what we need is a fleet of 20 helicopters,” Nabarro said.
The WHO official acknowledged the problem was part of broader cash crisis hitting humanitarian aid for many years.
“There is an extraordinary number of rich nations that are just not prepared to give significant resources at all to these crises,” he said.
Nabarro said he would raise the issue at an international meeting in Canada next week.
On Friday the UN’s World Food Programme complained that “high-profile” emergencies like Darfur were overshadowing the plight of millions of hungry people in other countries.