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UGANDA: 131 DIE EVERY DAY IN NORTHERN REGION SAY NGOS February 17, 2006
Apunyu Bonny
(SomaliNet) As a result of violence and poor conditions in camps in war torn regions in Northern Uganda at least131 people die every day. An NGO revealed Thursday. IRIN
"There are 918 excess deaths each week," the Civil Society Organisations for Peace in Northern Uganda (CSOPNU) said. "Each month almost 25,000 people in Uganda die from easily preventable diseases."
According to CSOPNU, 85 percent of deaths that would not have occurred under normal, non-crisis circumstances could be directly attributed to the poor living conditions, poor water and sanitation, inadequate health care provision and extreme poverty in the camps. "The two most common killers reported were malaria and HIV/AIDS," it added.
CSOPNU reported that some 58 children under the age of five die as a result of violence and preventable diseases, each day. A quarter of all children in the region older than ten years had lost one or both parents.
"Nearly half of all children in Kitgum, northern Uganda are stunted from chronic malnutrition," it said. "Three times more children under five years die in northern Uganda than in the rest of the country." A quarter of a million children in the region had never received any education, while some classrooms had as many as 300 students for every teacher.
CSOPNU is a loose coalition of about 40 NGOs whose purpose is to "advocate for a just and lasting peace in northern Uganda, based on analysis and articulation of underlying causes and effects of the conflict."