Refugee Camps as a Breeding Ground for Disease
September 25, 2012
United Nations relief agencies report that serious food and water problems are turning many refugee camps in the Middle East and Africa into breeding grounds for a range of life-threatening diseases.
This is the VOA Special English Health Report.
United Nations aid agencies say hundreds of thousands of refugees are living in unacceptable conditions at camps. These people fled their homes because of violence in the Middle East and Africa. The U.N. agencies are blaming serious food and water problems at many refugee camps for the spread of life-threatening diseases.
Officials say cholera, malaria and jaundice -- combined with malnutrition -- are threatening refugees who had hoped to be safe after they entered the camps.
There are thousands of people at one camp in South Sudan. They fled there to escape the military conflict in the area. Camp officials have reported cases of hepatitis E: a viral disease spread through contaminated food and water.
U.N. refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards says most of those infected are young people.
ADRIAN EDWARDS: "Hepatitis E hits young people between the ages of fifteen and forty hardest. In the three camps where we see refugees with acute jaundice syndrome, more than half are between twenty and thirty-nine."
Camps in countries like South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Libya, and Nigeria have reported severe cases of cholera. Officials say keeping cholera and jaundice from spreading is very difficult. They believe the best way to deal with these infections is to prevent them.
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