The IRC will be managing a new transit camp for some 25,000 Darfur refugees in eastern Chad and will oversee water, sanitation, health and education services at the site. The refugees, living in desperate and untenable conditions in the desert near the villages of Bahai and Cariari, are expected to be relocated within a month.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees decided to establish the interim center in order to quickly move refugees away from the unsafe border and to consolidate essential services ahead of the rainy season. UNHCR intends to relocate the refugees to a camp farther from the border in the future.
The site selected is in an extremely dry area that offers little cover from the harsh climate. The IRC is working with UNHCR to quickly develop the center and to ensure that adequate shelter, water and health facilities are in place in advance of the refugees' arrival.
“For most of the refugees, the daily quest to find safe drinking water has become a matter of survival,” says IRC's emergency response director Gerald Martone . “Developing reliable sources of water for refugees is our priority.”
Martone said IRC teams will employ a number of methods to supply clean drinking water: hand-digging deep wells, trucking water from others towns and pumping and treating turbid water from the nearby Cariari Lake.
Plans are also underway for a mass measles vaccination campaign for refugee children and the establishment of a therapeutic feeding center for malnourished refugees, a child protection program, malaria control initiatives and sanitation facilities.
In the meantime, the IRC continues to provide essential medical, water and sanitation services for the refugees and the communities currently hosting them amid a worsening health crisis. Click here for more details.
A second AmeriCares airlift of emergency drugs, medical equipment and water purification supplies arrived in Chad this week to support IRC's lifesaving health programs.
IRC to Expand Critical Aid Programs in North and South Darfur
IRC finds high rates of malnutrition and water-borne diseases among Darfur's displaced. (Photo: Peter Biro/IRC)
IRC relief activities for displaced Sudanese on the other side of the border are also rapidly expanding. The IRC is providing logistical support for the Sudanese government's measles vaccination campaign in camps near IRC's North Darfur relief hub, Al Fasher, while running nutrition, disease-prevention and hygiene promotion campaigns.
Plans are also underway to construct a new clinic in Kassab camp near the town of Kutum , 120 kilometers northwest of Al Fasher, where the IRC is in the process of installing washrooms and hundreds of latrines. Latrine construction is also set to begin in the nearby Fato Borno camp.
Meanwhile, support is also being provided for education programs at Kassab. The IRC covered some 80 temporary classrooms with plastic sheeting, so that learning activities could continue during the rainy season.
In addition, the IRC is currently operating a health facility at Abu Shouk, a camp with 30,000 displaced people near El Fasher. The clinic houses a therapeutic feeding center for severely malnourished children, a primary health care clinic, a reproductive health clinic, a lab, a vaccination room and two birthing rooms. The facility treats an average of 360 patients a day.
“Various forms of diarrhea are the most common problem being treated at the clinic, together with measles, malaria and trauma related injuries,” says Belinda King, IRC's regional coordinator for Darfur . “Because the displaced sometimes can't get treatment for common ailments until it's too late, we're seeing several people die needlessly every day.” The IRC continues to provide shelter materials for new arrivals at Abu Shouk.
In South Darfur meanwhile, the IRC has just completed a needs assessment in preparation for the start of emergency health, water and sanitation services at camps in and around the town of Nyala . Alan Manski, the IRC's emergency operations coordinator, says the uprooted in this region are in need of urgent emergency assistance. “Their condition is extremely critical,” Manski said.
The food situation on both sides of the border is dire. Recent nutritional surveys in northeastern Chad and in North Darfur indicated that almost 40 per cent of the refugee children are malnourished; ten per cent of them seriously.
