SRI LANKA: Officials warn of disease at increasingly crowded refugee camps; killed aid worker buried

With thousands of Sri Lankans displaced by fighting moving into increasingly overcrowded and unsanitary camps, medical staff say illness is beginning to spread and warn the situation could get worse. Aid workers estimate about 40,000 people are packed into the northeastern town of Kantale after they fled days of shellfire and street battles between troops and Tamil Tiger rebels, at least doubling the town's population. "I think the estimated number of people are coming up to about 50-55,000 people. In Kantale itself, we have up to about 40,000 people. That is a rough estimate. These people are coming in and out. There are no proper control of the numbers, but that is what we estimate," said Amjad Mohamed Saleem, Sri Lanka country director for London-based group Muslim Aid. This school was originally designed to hold some 200-300 children. Now, aid workers say 6,000-9,000 thousand people are living there. The smell of sewage hangs in the air between the rough white tarpaulin tents and classrooms. "There is a real shortage of toilets. Nobody can go. We even can't go and do it outside because the paddy fields are all round. We are all suffering. We fled with only a plastic bag filled with clothes " said 48-year-old mason Kdir Batcha Anzar, who like thousands of others fled the town of Mutur on foot through mortar fire and clashes last week. The United Nations reported 80 cases of diarrhoea on Tuesday (August 8), a result of the poor sanitary facilities. Dr. Mohammed Shahir, a Sri Lankan government doctor manning one of the medical clinics said the camps were overcrowded and the refugees were coming down with skin and digestive infections. "For a session morning to lunch time we are treating around 400 patients and in those mainly the diarrhoea patients. It is very difficult to treat the diarrhoea patients because patients desecrating their stools and more and more people start getting infected through that," he said. Oxfam is distributing 100,000 litres of water a day and has started building some chemical pit toilets. But aid staff say the government has simply allocated too little space and people must be moved on to more sites. Meanwhile, aid workers and the international community are clamouring for answers after 17 local staff from international aid group Action Contre Le Faim were found shot dead in their office in the eastern town of Mutur after fierce fighting there. Some relatives of the dead -- most of them Tamils -- are blaming government troops for the killings. The Tigers and the military each accuse the other. Action Contre Le Faim on Wednesday (August 9) demanded that independent international observers take part in the investigation. More than 800 people had been killed this year, even before the recent fighting, in which the military says it has killed more than 150 rebels. The Tigers demand a separate homeland for Tamils in the north and east and have warned further attacks by the military could trigger a return to a two-decade civil war that killed more than 65,000 people.

ITN Source | August 10, 2006

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