Poverty, genocide, hunger, and disease are only some of the several challenges Africa faces. One of the, arguably, most definable struggles Africa has dealt with in the past decade is the genocide and deaths in Darfur, a western region of Sudan. A new study, published by the New York Times, claims disease as the number one killer in the region, not violence.
This past week, the New York Times published an article attributing disease, rather than violence, as the main cause of death for 80 percent of those who died during the six years of fighting in Darfur.
According to the article, "Study Points to Disease as Main Killer in Darfur,", violence was responsible as the main killer almost five years ago, towards the beginning of the conflict.
Violence, it said, was the main cause in 2004, the year after the rebellion in the Darfur region of western Sudan began, setting off a brutal repression by janjaweed militias burning down villages and government jets flying bombing runs.
So what happened then? So many people ended up fleeing from the violence, and "2.7 million ended up in camps for displaced people." It was then diseases like pneumonia and malaria, says the article, claimed lives.
Darfur has fallen on and off the radar of political agenda and public attention over the last five years. Sudan has made choices and action which the international community has not held it accountable for. Could one argue that any country in, say, Europe or South America, which had the equivocal violence and denial of humanitarian relief of Darfur, would have been treated similarly by the international community? Let's hope we don't have to find that answer the hard way.
As Haiti brings attention across the world to developing nations and struggles faced for years, let us remember as we help rebuild Haiti to help rebuild other nations too. It took a horrific earthquake for the eyes of the world to turn to Haiti, but apparently it must take more than years of consecutive violence and 300,000 deaths for the same to attention to Sudan.