IRC to Begin Emergency Aid for Internally Displaced Chadians

The International Rescue Committee is preparing to launch emergency services for some five thousand displaced Chadians and as many as 15,000 other people living in the violence-torn area of Am Timan in southeastern Chad. The region is suffering from an explosion of communal violence exacerbated by the Darfur conflict.  An estimated 100,000 people have had to flee their homes.

“Conditions for the uprooted and their host communities are deplorable,” says the IRC emergency response team’s Gang Karume, who traveled to the area for a rapid needs assessment last week with the Chad program’s health and environmental health coordinators Sylvie Boivin and Tim Burroughs.

Karume said there are serious shelter, health, water, sanitation and protection concerns.  Boivin says water-borne diseases are on the rise and many of the sick have to walk 25 kilometers to access health care. “Some of the villages had no health posts, doctors, nurses, midwives or medicines.” She said the team came across a group of widowed women who had been brutally attacked and were unable to find medical treatment. 

The IRC is hoping to begin health programs in the coming weeks--supporting existing health posts, running mobile medical clinics, improving access to clean water and promoting hygiene.  The IRC began working in Chad nearly three years ago to aid Darfur refugees and continues to manage a refugee camp in the northeast for 26,000 people.

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Read IRC emergency communications coordinator Melissa Winkler's blog from Chad.