DARFUR, SUDAN/EASTERN CHAD - 13 Sep 2004 -
The IRC in Darfur has launched a pre-emptive strike against infectious diseases after new data showed a spike in hepatitis E, an incurable liver disease. The incidence of a major hepatitis symptom - acute jaundice - doubled during the first ten days of September at the two camps where the IRC has built health clinics in recent weeks, said Roberta Gately, the IRC’s health coordinator in South Darfur.
“We are seeing a worrisome increasing trend in the numbers of acute jaundice syndrome,” Gately said.
The IRC is actively working with the World Health Organization and Sudan’s Health Ministry, along with other private relief groups, to keep track of the outbreak and stop it in its tracks. Hepatitis is caused mainly by fecal-oral contact, which often results from failing to wash one’s hands after going to the bathroom. To stop a possible epidemic, the IRC has launched hygiene programs and set up hand-washing centers and latrines at the massive Kalma camp-a veritable city of ramshackle huts housing 76,000 people-and the squalid, densely packed Otash Camp, where roughly 18,000 uprooted people have encamped.
Meanhile, additional medical supplies have been flown to the Kashuni Camp, the base of IRC humanitarian operations in northeastern Chad. The 15-ton shipment donated by AmeriCares consists of a six-month supply of malaria treatment drugs as well as other life-saving medicines.
“This is crucial,” says the IRC’s acting field coordinator, Laura Hutchings. “We have seen an increase in malaria over the past two months.”
A second AmeriCares shipment containing a six-month supply of nutritional supplement is scheduled to arrive in Chad later this month. Severe malnutrition, especially among children, remains a large problem in the Kashuni camp with over 650 people currently enrolled in IRC’s feeding program.
