Plea for funds as Darfur death toll reaches 70,000

AT least 70,000 people have died in refugee camps in Sudan’s Darfur region since March, said the UN’s health agency today.

The World Health Organisation warned the mortality rate will not fall unless countries provide more money.

“We are running on a threadbare, hand-to-mouth existence, and if the plight of these people in Darfur is as important to the international community as it seems to be then we would have expected more long-term support,” said WHO’s head of crisis operations Dr David Nabarro.

Dr Nabarro said the estimate of 70,000 dead only covered the period since March, when aid agencies have had some access to the Darfur region, and only includes deaths caused by the poor conditions in temporary camps. WHO is unable to estimate how many people may have died from violence, he said.

The conflict in Darfur has forced 1.4 million villagers from their homes.

More than 200,000 of those have crossed to neighbouring Chad, where tension has risen because resources to care for the refugees are scarce.

The UN and aid groups have called Darfur the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Dr Nabarro said the major cause of death appeared to be diarrhoea, as well as fever and respiratory disease.

There have been some improvements recently - an outbreak of hepatitis E appears to have stabilised, there are fewer cases of jaundice and dysentery, and cholera in Chad hasn’t yet spread to refugee camps.

The Darfur crisis is in the news daily, but that hasn’t translated into humanitarian aid said Dr Nabarro.

The United Nations has only received half of the £160 million it needs to do its work he said.

“I am personally concerned that we still don’t have a significant enough popular perception around the world of the enormity of the suffering experienced by people in Darfur and Chad, where disease and suffering is being experienced on a quite extraordinary and inhuman scale,” he said. Aid agencies have been unable to get to parts of the Darfur region, an area the size of France, because of insecurity.

They also have had operations hampered in areas they can reach. On Sunday, the UN World Food Programme agency halted its operations temporarily in parts of Darfur after two aid workers were killed.