WHO: 350 people a day could die in Darfur camps as rainy season arrives
By ERICA BULMAN, Associated Press Writer
GENEVA, July 16, 2004 (AP) — About 350 people could die daily in camps sheltering the 1 million people who have fled their homes in Sudan’s embattled western Darfur region unless camp conditions improve dramatically when the rainy season soon starts, a U.N. health agency officials said Friday.
The World Health Organization estimates that 1 million of the 1.2 million of the regions’ displaced black Africans are staying in camps where they are dying at a rate of about 200 a day, said Dr. David Nabarro, head of crisis operations for the WHO.
However, the figure is lower than in March, when people were dying at a rate of about 300 to 700 a day, he estimated.
“This may not seem like a lot but it’s 20 times the normal death rate in a developing country,” Nabarro said. “And as the rains set in and if relief is not provided, we believe the death rate will bounce back up.”
The number of deaths has fallen due to increased security, humanitarian aid, hospital access and immunization programs, he said.
Nabarro said he estimated about 50,000 people have died over the last six months as a result of disease because of poor conditions in refugee camps in Darfur.
Things will become more difficult in August and September, when the rainy season makes many parts of Darfur inaccessible, hindering the delivery of aid and turning camps into a breeding ground for infectious diseases.
U.N. officials call the situation in Darfur the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The conflict has killed up to 30,000 people and left some 2 million in desperate need of aid.
Some 1.2 million of Darfur’s 6.7 million people have been displaced from their villages and homes and more than 200,000 refugees have fled to neighboring Chad.
Nabarro said people in camps in Darfur receive just over half the minimum amount of clean water they need on a daily basis. He said people had stopped using the insufficient and squalid latrines in camps. Inadequate water, unsanitary conditions combined with malnutrition and the coming rains could lead to epidemics of diarrhea, cholera, dysentery and malaria.
Nomadic Arab tribes have long been in conflict with their African farming neighbors over the region’s dwindling resources, particularly water and usable land.
The tensions exploded into violence when two African rebel groups the Sudan Liberation Army and Justice and Equality Movement took up arms in February 2003 over what they regard as unjust treatment by the government in their struggle with Arab countrymen in Darfur.
Since then, a calamity has unfolded in Darfur as armed bands of herders, most of them Arabs, have torched village after village, killing up to 30,000 people and driving more than 1 million black Africans from their homes, according to U.N. estimates. The U.S. Agency for International Development has warned that the death toll could surge to 350,000 or more if aid doesn’t reach some 2 million people soon.
A cease-fire was signed April 8, but both sides accuse each other of violations.