A R5-million aid package will be taken to Nyala, West Darfur in Sudan by the Gift of the Givers Foundation on Wednesday, to help ease the region’s humanitarian crisis.
The organisation will charter an aircraft to fly the package to the El-Geneina camp near the Chad border, inside Sudan, where there was a huge concentration of internally displaced refugees, said the foundation’s national co-ordinator Imtiaz Sooliman on Tuesday afternoon.
”Sanitation, drinking water, food shortages, shelter and disease are the major problems in the area.”
He said the Sudanese authorities had granted the foundation permission to land two aircraft in West Darfur, with 80 tons of supplies.
The package will include a primary health care clinic, blankets, food parcels, new clothing and rubber mats to serve as flooring inside tents.
The foundation will also take water purification tablets, medicine, tents and the Gift of the Givers high energy protein supplement — a groundnut-soya milk high energy protein supplement, vitamin and mineral enriched, which does not need water, cooking or preparation.
Sooliman said representatives of the Foreign Affairs Department would accompany the foundation’s assistants on the eight-day trip.
But he said it was not clear by Tuesday how many members from the department would accompany the group.
”All political and diplomatic negotiations were carried out by the department both through the Sudanese Embassy in Pretoria and our mission in Khartoum.” – Sapa