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July 2007: AusAID, the Australian Government's international aid agency, is contributing AUD$2 million to Australian Red Cross to support its ongoing response to the crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan. Red Cross is the only humanitarian organisation with international staff still operating in the troubled Gereida region of Darfur after escalating violence in late 2006 saw other aid agencies withdraw their expatriate staff from the area.
For Sudan's displaced people, the challenge continues
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The ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan has prompted the Red Cross to undertake one of its largest responses anywhere in the world. The security situation is highly volatile and unpredictable. This means that the Red Cross -- globally recognised as neutral and impartial -- is the only aid agency able to keep an international workforce, including Australians, in much of the stricken area.
The global Red Cross response is helping the local Sudanese Red Crescent deliver relief to hundreds of thousands of people who are acutely at risk from the ongoing internal conflict. The scale, duration and intensity of the fighting has forced close to two million people in the western Sudanese province to flee their homes since early 2003. |
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Internal conflict in the remote Darfur region of Sudan has forced two million people to flee their homes.
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According to the United Nations, at least 180,000 people may have died since violence erupted. More than 200,000 have sought refuge in neighbouring Chad, while countless others inside Sudan continue to look for safe refuge. In all, more than three million people have been directly affected by what the UN has dubbed the world's 'worst humanitarian crisis'.
Red Cross response
While families caught in the crossfire of this conflict await the result of ongoing peace negotiations to ease their plight, Red Cross is working day and night to avert a humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur by keeping displaced people alive and preventing outbreaks of disease.
Australian Red Cross launched it's appeal for Sudan in 2004. When the appeal closed in 2006, more than AUD $1.1 million had been raised to help people affected by the Darfur crisis.
Money raised through the Australian Red Cross Sudan appeal has been used towards establishing a primary health care clinic in the town of Gereida, where around 128,000 people low live in what is believed to be the largest internally displaced persons camp in Southern Darfur.
More than 15 Australian Red Cross aid workers have lent their expertise in Sudan since the conflict began, offering vital health and hygiene services.
Working in partnership with British Red Cross as well as International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Sudanese Red Crescent, the clinic has been providing basic healthcare, supplementary feeding programs for malnourished children and water for tens of thousands of people for more than two-and-a-half years.
The clinic is giving around 500 patient consultations every day, as well as running therapeutic feeding programs for around over 700 malnourished children under five-year-old every week. In addition, Red Cross, working with Oxfam, has improved the water and sanitation systems in the camp, as well as in Gereida town and surrounding villages.
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