Simon Nume <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
WHO tells Uganda to dismantle camps as deaths rise
The World Health Organisation wants Uganda to remove internally displaced people from camps in the country's war-ravaged northern region as reports say the government has failed to curtail the high death rates there.
The special representative of the WHO director general, Dr David Nabarro, said that the death rates in the camps have climbed so high that the only way to arrest the situation is to remove people from there.
Up to 1.4 million people in northern Uganda no longer live in their homes, having been herded into camps that are congested, with poor sanitation and hygiene conditions.
Dr Nabarro was speaking after the release of partial results of a survey carried out in the region to assess the death rate at the camps. The results revealed that the region has one of the highest death rates in the world, with 1.2 out of every 10, 000 people dying daily.
Dr Nabarro, who is the head of the WHO Health Action in Crisis group, was on a familiarisation tour of Gulu district last week. He also said that despite efforts to confront the four leading causes of death in the camps malaria, HIV/Aids, violence and dysentery the only way to tackle the problem is for the government to end the war.
"The results suggest that there are an extra 1,000 deaths every week due to living conditions. The insurgency should come to an end. Too many people are dying," he said.
The survey, which was carried out in Gulu, Kitgum and Pader between January and July this year, was the first to specifically seek to establish the causes and rates of mortality. As several organisations have pointed out in the past, malaria emerged at the top of the list, followed by HIV/Aids.
Survey results so far released by the government indicate that malaria accounts for 25 per cent of all deaths. HIV/Aids is second with 13.5 per cent, while violence accounts for 9.4 per cent.
The Minister for Disaster Preparedness, Christine Amongin Aporu, said that the government would decongest the camps, but there is no time frame for this.
"Decongestion has already started in the safer areas," she said.
At first called "protected villages," the camps were set up in the mid 1990s and expanded as the conflict escalated, leading to an increase in the incidence of disease, hunger and deaths.
In November last year, the medical charity Medicins Sans Frontiers reported that the death rates among children in Lira district camps stood at 5.4 out of 10,000. It also gave the higher figure of 10.5 out of 10,000 for one of the camps in the same period.
The government has been at pains to defend its policies in northern Uganda, where the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels have waged a war against the government for two decades. The military solution that President Yoweri Museveni is pursuing was partly to blame for the collapse of peace talks in December last year.
The Ministry of Health has defended its current report, with the acting Director General Dr Sam Okware saying it has been verified.
Although the people in the camps do not have access to clean drinking water and food is scarce, the World Food Programme (WFP) country representative, Ken Davies, said that nutrition is not a big contributor to mortality. He said that the sanitation and nutrition problems of the camps can only end when the camps are decongested.
Mr Davies said, however, that the problem of food shortage is likely to continue into 2006 because the people remained in the camps past the August planting season.
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