MSF: 5,000 Children in Darfur Are at Risk of Death

Luxembourg – Sudanhorizon – Agencies

The emergency director of Doctors Without Borders(AKA: Médecins Sans Frontières), Michel Olivier Lacharite, announced on Saturday that they are forced to stop their activities in Darfur as they only have an 80-bed hospital left that receives children in critical condition, which means that the other five thousand, who were returned for treatment, are at high risk of death today, due to the deterioration of the situation and the lack of supplies.

After some international organizations declared a famine in Zamzam camp a few weeks ago, a camp for displaced persons a few kilometers from the city of El Fasher, which hosts nearly half a million displaced persons who fled the fighting between the army and the joint forces on the one hand and the Rapid Support Militia on the other, a few trucks of humanitarian aid were able to arrive, but this is not enough, as Michel Olivier Lacharite, emergency director of the MSF, denounces.

A month ago, the NGO was forced to stop caring for children suffering from “moderate malnutrition”. At the beginning of last week, it finally stopped its outpatient activities. The organization reported in a report published on its website that despite some “minor improvements” observed in recent months, the MSF is still struggling to access some areas, and that the acceleration of fighting in Khartoum and El Fasher in recent weeks is not helping matters.

“It is clear that the intensity of the fighting can prevent access to El Fasher, but it also redraws all supply flows, so we have to review every month the places through which trucks can pass,” Michel Olivier concludes.

MSF Luxembourg said in the middle of last month that despite announcements of hope for positive developments, for example after peace talks in Geneva, no significant humanitarian aid has reached the residents of Zamzam camp and the neighbouring war-torn city of El Fasher, and most supply routes are controlled by the Rapid Support Forces, which have made it almost impossible to bring therapeutic food, medicines and basic supplies into the camp since fighting intensified around El Fasher last May.