New nightmare for Darfur region

The United Nations’s health body raised alarm on Tuesday over a jump in deadly cases of hepatitis E in Sudan’s Darfur region and another agency said a new wave of refugees has fled to neighbouring Chad to escape the violence.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) also warned that Chad is worried about the harmful impact of the refugee influx on its fragile economy.

Hoping to ease the crisis in Darfur, which has prompted up to 200 000 people to escape to Chad and 1,2-million to flee their homes internally, a third international organisation said it is due to sign an accord with Sudan on Thursday to assist the safe return of citizens.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said unclean water and terrible sanitation have triggered more than 1 000 cases of hepatitis E, resulting in at least 27 deaths. The figures compare with 625 cases and 22 deaths reported last week.

“It is not a minor thing,” said WHO spokesperson Fadela Chaib.

“It shows how bad water and sanitation is in the camps despite the international organisations’ efforts to improve it,” she told a news conference in Geneva, where the global health body is based.

Hepatitis E has a low mortality rate compared with hepatitis B and C, but its outbreak in Sudan — a country that until now has been free of the disease — could have a devastating impact among vulnerable people such as pregnant women and children, the spokesperson said.

“[The] WHO, with its partners, is conducting activities to reduce this epidemic of hepatitis E across the whole of Darfur, in particular the west, which has been hardest hit,” Chaib said.

The agency, with help from Sudanese health officials and the United Nations Children’s Fund, is trying to raise awareness about the illness — which is passed person-to-person and is typically linked with dirty water — and is delivering water-purification tablets.

New wave of refugees

Underlining the terror in Darfur, which has claimed about 50 000 lives since Sudan’s army forces and the so-called Janjaweed militia cracked down on minority tribes backing a rebellion in February 2003, the UNHCR reported that 478 refugees have entered Chad — the first such wave in two months.

“The refugees said they had finally decided the leave because they lost hope that peace would come, had limited resources given the constant looting by the Janjaweed and because they sensed the Janjaweed and authorities connived to prevent them from leaving,” the UNHCR said.

The agency added that it is monitoring the border to establish whether the recent arrivals are an indication of a flood of new refugees to Chad or merely an exception to the two-month lull in crossings.

Officials in Chad warned the UNHCR’s head of Sudan operations, Jean-Marie Fakhouri, that the Sudanese victims are placing a great strain on the economy.

“They told Fakhouri that any large, new arrival of refugees could destabilise the already fragile Chadian economy,” the agency reported.

In a bid to help resolve the hardship for the people of Darfur, the director general of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) was travelling to the Sudanese capital of Khartoum on Tuesday to meet with senior officials.

“During the visit, [Brunson] McKinley will sign an agreement to oversee and assist in the safe and voluntary return of internally displaced persons to Darfur,” said IOM spokesperson Jean-Philippe Chauzy, adding that the signing was due to take place on Thursday. — Sapa-AFP