WHO warns 10,000 may die in Darfur
Date: 02-Jul-04
Country: SWITZERLAND
A cholera epidemic could break out within weeks now that heavy rains have begun, striking 200,000 to 300,000 of the more than one million displaced in the troubled western area of Sudan, a top WHO official told a news briefing yesterday.
Darfur has become the world's worst humanitarian crisis after Arab militias drove African farmers from their villages on a campaign of ethnic cleansing, the United Nations says.
"We anticipate that if things go ahead as at the moment, 10,000 people will die in the next month," David Nabarro, head of WHO's unit for health action in crises, told a news briefing in Geneva after a trip to Darfur.
"However, if we can get a strong, effective relief operation in place then we can bring that death rate down to less than 3,000 people in the next month," he said.
Nabarro said this could be done by preparing for diarrhoea, cholera, dysentery, malaria and other infectious diseases.
Cholera is an extreme form of watery diarrhoea which killed tens of thousands of Rwandans who fled genocide in 1994, according to the WHO. Dysentery, a bloody form of diarrhoea which is harder to treat, and malaria, a mosquito-borne disease, would be expected to follow in August.
BIGGER THAN IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN
The WHO, a United Nations (U.N.) agency, has stepped up its response and hopes to deploy 50 international staff this month in Darfur, Nabarro said. He praised work by aid agencies including Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders).
A veteran of hotspots, Nabarro said the aid operation needed 20 helicopters and high-frequency radios for communication between workers at the more than 100 camps for the displaced.
"The challenge facing us is that the sheer scale of the operations needed in terms of relief personnel, helicopters, trucks and communications equipment is really way beyond what we as the U.N. ourselves can do," he said. "It is bigger than the Balkans, and certainly bigger than Iraq and Afghanistan."
Revamping Darfur's 13 hospitals and bringing them up to "basic standards" to perform operations and treatment in hygienic conditions has become WHO's top priority, Nabarro said.
"We want water, sanitation, electricity, waste disposal and fly netting in hospitals ... We have got to make sure that people don't have to bribe their way into health facilities, paying charges here and there, because that is the ultimate cruelty."
"To me this is the best sign that we can give to the people of Darfur that actually the world cares about them," he added.
The WHO has spent $4 million (2.2 million pounds) from the United States on health projects in Darfur, and will require another $4.5 million for the next three months, he said.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, on a visit there yesterday, assured the displaced they would not be forced home.
