North Darfur, Kordofan rains destroy houses and lives

14/08/2018 11:50 TAWILA / EL OBEID / MURNEI

Heavy torrential rains and winds have destroyed hundreds of houses and a number of classrooms in camps for displaced people in North Darfur. Four people including two children died of fever and diarrhoea.

Floods in Naivasha camp, Shangil Tobaya, North Darfur, July 2016 (RD)

Heavy rains and winds have destroyed hundreds of houses and a number of classrooms in camps for displaced people in North Darfur. Four people including two children died of fever and diarrhoea.

Sheikh Mukthar Bosh, a leader of Rwanda camp in Tawila locality, reported that approximately 1,000 houses have been destroyed and 28 classrooms of three schools were uprooted. Hundreds of cottages in the Tawila market were destroyed too,

“The material losses are estimated at about SDG200,000 ($7,105*) and the losses of the market at about SDG 100,000 ($3,552).”

Via Radio Dabanga he appealed to the authorities and organisations to provide plastic sheets, blankets and maintenance of schools to the affected people.

North Kordofan

The rainfall in Wad El Baga, 30 kilometres from El Obeid in North Kordofan, has damaged classrooms so severely that studies of the area’s main co-education school have been disrupted.

The chair of the educational council of the school, Mahmoud Eisa Madawi, called on all relief organisations, institutions, and philanthropists to come to their aid and support the rehabilitation of the school.

Wad El Baga is one of the southern sources of water for the state capital El Obeid, including El Ain and Khor Bagar reservoirs.

Diseases

A resident of Murnei locality in West Darfur reported the death of four people from his area in the last couple of days, because of severe fevers and diarrhoea. 4-year-olds Sara Adam and Samiya Ahmed Abakar died, as well as Mariam Abdelrahman and Khamisa Mohamed.

Malaria, diarrhoea and unknown fevers have been reported in large areas of Darfur, combined with the rise of medicine prices.

The diseases and symptoms are characteristic of the rainy season in Sudan, when accumulated water from rains and floods leave pools of standing water where flies breed. Health workers have attributed the spread of the diseases also to the deterioration of environmental health during the rainy season.

* Based on the indicative US Dollar rate quoted by the Central Bank of Sudan (CboS)