Darfur

Background
Africa’s largest country, Sudan covers an area about the size of the United States east of the Mississippi River. Geographically diverse, it is home to deserts, mountain ranges, swamps, and rain forests, and has large areas of cultivatable land and significant gold and oil reserves. It gained independence from Britain in 1956, and, since that time, has struggled to maintain stability.

In 2003, the Sudanese government entered into talks with the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army to try to negotiate an end to a protracted, north-south civil war that cost the lives of 1.5 million people - whether from violence, famine, or disease - and forced as many as four million others to flee their homes and livelihoods. While negotiations dragged on, fighting broke out in the western region of Darfur, where rebels seeking increased autonomy began an insurrection. Although a historic peace accord put an end to the north-south civil war in 2005, the conflict in Darfur has only escalated. Darfur is widely recognized as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today.

While exact figures are not available, 200,000 are believed to have perished in or around the fighting, and another two million have been forced to flee their homes. Those trapped by the conflict have had to rely almost exclusively on the help of international aid agencies to survive. Such assistance has sharply reduced nutritional shortfalls, boosted vaccination rates, and generally improved the health of the displaced population, but such success is both fragile and vulnerable. Continuing violence endangers residents, IDPs, and the NGOs working to provide them with health care and basic necessities such as food, water, and shelter.

The February 2008 rebel attack on the capital of Chad, just across the border to the west, further destabilized the Darfur region. Approximately 240,000 people had already fled Darfur into the deserts of eastern Chad.

What International Medical Corps Is Doing
International Medical Corps has been providing critical emergency medical services for conflict-affected residents of South and West Darfur since July 2004. With a focus on children under five and women of reproductive age, IMC has implemented a range of services to meet the needs of a targeted population of more than 500,000 who have been severely traumatized by the region’s ongoing violence.

International Medical Corps operates seven primary health care centers and two mobile clinics aimed at improving access to health care services, nutritional assistance, and clean water in South and West Darfur, in the communities of Nyala (South Darfur), Deliej, Garsilla, Al Geneina, Zalengei, and the Zalengei-Garsilla corridor (West Darfur). These facilities provide family medicine; pre-natal, maternal, and child health care; immunizations, including for DPT, polio, measles, TB, and influenza; referrals and transportation for secondary care; and health and hygiene education. In addition, IMC has rehabilitated local health care facilities—a ministry of health clinic in Deliej among them—and provides medicines and supplies and health care training for their traditional birth attendants, community health workers, and ministry of health staff.

International Medical Corps also works along Sudan’s frontier with Chad, in order to reach hard-hit populations that have had little or no access to health care or aid. To serve over 60,000 displaced Darfurians and 100,000 Chadians in the surrounding host communities, IMC built a primary health care clinic in Al Geneina, West Darfur, rehabilitated several derelict health stations in areas abandoned in the early days of the war, and set up mobile medical units to reach those in remote locations.

While rebuilding Darfur’s health care infrastructure and providing care to its people is critical for their survival, International Medical Corps places special emphasis on training local medical personnel in the skills and knowledge needed to rebuild their own health care systems. IMC provides extensive, hands-on training in the full range of health and managerial skills needed to restore self-reliance. For example, IMC provides technical assistance and support to the ministry of health, as well as on-the-job training for doctors and nurses who have just completed medical school. IMC also utilizes its network of traditional birth attendants and midwives in Darfur to provide first-line counseling to women who have been victims of sexual violence. Staff and volunteers also are training community health workers to identify and refer high-risk cases for treatment at IMC clinics.

Since February 2005, International Medical Corps has made a significant impact in another area critically important to the health and well-being of Darfur’s internally displaced populations: water and environmental sanitation. Specifically, IMC has chlorinated water at distribution points, constructed drainage canals, provided maintenance for hand pumps, rehabilitated water sources, and dug new wells. Since this programming began, there has been a 25 percent decrease in vector-borne illnesses in the Deliej/Garsilla corridor alone.

Despite the ongoing conflict, International Medical Corps will continue to deliver health care and training to the conflict-affected residents of South and West Darfur.