News

US aid operation ‘contributed to deaths’ in Somalia

The US intervention in Somalia has done little to improve the health of the country’s citizens and may even have contributed to death rates remaining high, says a recent report by human rights organisation African Rights.

The report, Somalia: Operation Restore Hope - a preliminary assessment, says that by focusing help on the main towns in Somalia and so displacing unrest to the rural areas, US intervention has made it more difficult for refugees to return home and rebuild their lives.

African Rights maintains that by October 1992, when the US intervened with Operation Restore Hope, the peak of deaths due to famine had passed and the main cause of death was disease. Previous famine experience has shown that diseases like tuberculosis and malaria continue long after the peak of deaths caused by starvation. The epidemics are mainly due to the breakdown in public health services. For example, ‘camp diseases’ such as bronchitis and pneumonia are common in the refugee centres where health care systems and sanitation are not adequately established.

Although disease outbreaks had been predicted by experts, African Rights says that public health had been neglected by aid agencies and the current epidemics could have been prevented. The biggest killer has been measles, mainly due to a collapse in the vaccination chain. Dysentery is also common, as a result of poor water supply and sanitation.

Health workers are angry that too much aid money has gone to providing feeding centres at the expense of public health concerns such as women’s centres - there has been an alarming increase in gynaecological disorders. Other problems, such as the effects of war and famine on mental health, have yet to be faced.

African Rights, 11 Marshalsea Road, London SE1 1EP.