UNICEF says 15 children dying per day at just one Sudan camp

FRANKFURT, July 23, 2004 (dpa) — Up to 15 children die on a daily basis at the Mornei refugee camp in southern Sudan, a German UNICEF goodwill ambassador said Friday.

Dysentery and malaria along with malnutrition are the prime causes of death in the camp, where some 90,000 refugees have fled fighting between rival forces in the Darfur region, said UNICEF ambassador Steffen Seibert.

“It is a deadly cycle of diarrhea, dehydration and death,” he said.

Approximately 1.2 million refugees have been directly affected by fighting that has raged in Darfur for the past year.

In addition, over 100,000 people have fled to neighbouring Chad, where UNICEF is also providing emergency assistance.

Hundreds of villages have been burned, crops and livestock looted or destroyed, and food reserves and coping mechanisms eroded.

This devastation has occurred in a region already under-served in terms of health, water, sanitation and education services. These services are now completely over-stretched and unable to provide adequate assistance to the IDPs and neighbouring villages.

Consequently, children and women are left extremely vulnerable to epidemic diseases, which are likely to increase as a result of the upcoming rainy season, and malnutrition has reached alarming rates among children under five.