Some 10,000 people in Darfur could die of cholera and dysentery in July alone unless a massive aid operation can be set up to helicopter in food and medicines, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said.
A cholera epidemic could break out within weeks now that heavy rains have begun, striking 200,000 to 300,000 of the more than one million displaced in the troubled western area of Sudan, a top WHO official told a news briefing today.
Darfur has become the world's worst humanitarian crisis after Arab militias drove African farmers from their villages on a campaign of ethnic cleansing, the United Nations says.
"We anticipate that if things go ahead as at the moment, 10,000 people will die in the next month," Mr David Nabarro, head of WHO's unit for health action in crises, told a news briefing in Geneva after a trip to Darfur.
"However, if we can get a strong, effective relief operation in place then we can bring that death rate down to less than 3,000 people in the next month," he said.
Mr Nabarro said this could be done by preparing for diarrhoea, cholera, dysentery, malaria and other infectious diseases.
"The challenge facing us is that the sheer scale of the operations needed in terms of relief personnel, helicopters, trucks and communications equipment is really way beyond what we as the U.N. ourselves can do," he said. "It is bigger than the Balkans, and certainly bigger than Iraq and Afghanistan."