Soroti District Runs Out of Medicine for 130,000 Internally Displaced People
The Monitor (Kampala)
August 27, 2003
Posted to the web August 27, 2003
Patrick E. Angonu
Kampala
Soroti district has no more drugs to treat displaced people who are fleeing LRA rebels in neighbouring districts.
The District Director of Health Services in Soroti, Dr Nicholas Okwana, says that he cannot find enough drugs to serve the 130,000 displaced people in Soroti town.
He could now suspend Operation Safe Haven (OSH) - the emergency health relief programme for displaced people in the municipality.
The death toll is reportedly rising in the camps that are crowded yet they lack food, water and proper sanitation.
Displaced people started flooding Soroti town after LRA rebels attacked Katakwi, Kumi and Kaberamaido districts.
The first attack was on Obalanga sub-county in Katakwi on June 15. Soroti district authorities created the OSH programme to treat the many displaced people suffering from malaria, cough, diarrhoea, dysentery and worms.
"We would have wound up OSH today but we've extended the operation for the next three days," Dr Okwana told The Monitor in Soroti on August 26.
The government gave some drugs, mostly Chloroquine, but the stock was too little to treat all the IDPs.
Dr Okwana however dismissed reports of a cholera outbreak in the IDP camps and at the Soroti referral hospital.
"Two people died at Swaria camp and some have died at Soroti hospital but their deaths are not related to cholera," he said.
Dr Bernard Odu, the medical superintendent at Soroti hospital, recently said that the hospital could no longer cope with the rising number of patients from the IDP camps.
When Mr John Opolot of Asamuk recently lost two children in one day, one at dawn and another in the afternoon, fears of a cholera outbreak in the IDP camps spread.
Opolot's family had camped under the mangrove trees in the compound of St. Peter's Cathedral in Soroti.
