The war continues to rage in Darfur. Many wonder why should we care. We have poverty and problems of our own in America. As many of you know, many still suffer down on the MS gulf coast and in the new orleans region. So why Darfur? A lot of people will assume that many are dying as a direct result of the war. That is not so. The war is a cause of death-indirectly. When you burn down villages, rob and pillage it causes problems in the community. People are malnurished and being stricken will illness that soon will not able to be healed due to finances. Students can start petitions and write letters to their congressmen to increase assistance to this region. Older people can consider sponsoring a child or even bringing one into their home. Below is a snippet from an article in today's New York Times. Think, "if I was in the situation wouldn't I want someone to reach out to me."
As Darfur War Rages On, Disease and Hunger Kill
ZAM ZAM, Sudan, May 24 — The boy's legs were limp. Folds of skin hung loosely from his bones, easily holding the shape of the doctor's pinch — a telltale sign of dehydration.
His face glowed with fever, and his narrow chest heaved and fluttered. His milky eyes darted desperately around the dim tent. He was a month old but weighed less than five pounds.
If this child, Mukhtar Ahmed, could be said to have had any good fortune in his short life, it is that he fell ill last week, and not a month from now. Within a few weeks even the doctor treating him may be gone.
Dr. Sayid Obeid Bakhiet's clinic, one of just two left in this vast, squalid camp of 35,000 people displaced by the conflict in the huge Darfur region of western Sudan, is out of money. It will be forced to close at the end of June unless the organization that runs it, the Sudanese Red Crescent, finds more cash, Dr. Bakhiet said.
"What will happen to these people when I am gone?" he asked as he rushed between the flood of patients he sees — as many as 80 a day, six days a week. "Only God knows."
The brutal war in Darfur has set off what the United Nations has called the "world's worst humanitarian crisis," a crucible of death that seems to grow grimmer despite a new peace agreement. But it is not bullets that kill most people here now. It is pneumonia borne on desert dust, diarrhea caused by dirty water, malaria carried by mosquitoes to straw huts with no nets.
At least 200,000 and perhaps as many as 450,000 have died as a direct result of the conflict in Darfur, according to estimates by international health and human rights organizations, though no one is sure how many of the deaths have come from combat and how many from the hunger and disease that have been caused or worsened by the war.
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