Up to 10,000 people dying each month in Darfur: WHO

GENEVA, Sept 13 (AFP) — As many as 10,000 displaced people could be dying each month in Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region, six times higher than normal mortality rates, a World Health Organisation study revealed Monday.

“What we are getting from this study is that the number of deaths is between 6.000 and 10.000 per month,” David Nabarro, the WHO’s official in charge of health actions in crisis situations, told reporters here.

Under normal conditions, total mortality for the population concerned would be expected to stand at around 1,500 per month, he said.

“A very high proportion of the dead are children,” according to Nabarro, who said the main causes of death were diarrhoea due to water pollution, fever, pneumonia and various injuries.

Nabarro called the death rate “unacceptably high”, saying the figures were higher than during the wars in East Timor, the Balkans or Iraq in 1991.

He said the main priority was to improve hygiene conditions, access to clean water and the management of camps in the western Sudanese region, but warned the current relief operation may not be enough to match the scale of the crisis.

The WHO study was carried out with help from the Sudanese government among 9,000 people in Darfur’s three provinces, where 1.2 million people are living in precarious conditions in camps for the displaced.

According to Nabarro, the daily mortality rate among the displaced stood at 1.5 per 10,000 in North Darfur, where some 380,000 people are displaced, and rose to 2.5 among children under five — three times higher than the average African death rate.

Mortality rates in West Darfur, where there are some 500,000 displaced persons, stood at 2.9 per 10,000, six times the average African rate, while they stood at 3.8 in the south — although inspectors could only access a single camp in South Darfur for security reasons.

According to United Nations estimates, up to 50,000 people have died in Darfur since two rebel groups rose up against the government in February 2003, sparking a crackdown by Khartoum and a proxy Arab militia.

Nabarro said the WHO study appeared to corroborate the UN figure of 50,000 dead. Another estimated 1.4 million people have fled their homes in the fighting, with about 180,000 crossing the border into Chad.