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Sudan: Agencies Hasten to Distribute Aid in Darfur As Rainy Season Nears, UN
Says

UN News Service (New York)
NEWS
May 19, 2004
Posted to the web May 19, 2004

With the June to September rainy season approaching, humanitarian agencies
working in the strife-torn Darfur area of western Sudan are distributing
shelter, blankets and food mainly to internally displaced people (IDPs), the
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said
today.
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) would donate food to about a half a million
people this month and would like eventually to serve 1.2 million people, after
having already handed out 2.2 tons of food to 126,000 people in Darfur.
The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) was training people to combat acute
malnutrition and it would monitor therapeutic feeding sites. The agency was
also wrapping up plans to immunize children against measles in all three Darfur
states in June.
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were distributing shelter and cooking
items, as well as thousands of blankets, OCHA said.
The Darfur Humanitarian Profile for May estimates that more than 2 million
people have now been affected by the attacks by Sudan's Arab Janjaweed militia,
compared to 1.1 million reported in the April Profile.
It said approximately 432,329 IDPs are in West Darfur, 320,906 in North Darfur
and 233,138 in South Darfur. The rest are refugees who fled to neighbouring
Chad.

   

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