283,000 displaced July 2009
By: Dru Chandrasekera
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| Conor Gallagher |
As the hundreds of thousands of displaced are now under the territorial jurisdiction of the Sri Lankan government, the primary responsibility for their welfare and protection lies with the respective governing authorities. At the moment, there are 34 camps for these internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the north, with most concentrated in the district of Vavuniya. According to the government, there are some 283,000 displaced persons spread across the northern districts of Mannar, Jaffna, Trincomalee and Vavuniya.
In fleeing their homes, the IDPs were able to take very little. One aid-agency employee (who wished to remain anonymous, as did all of the sources for this story, given the extremely tense situation on the ground in Sri Lanka today) noted that many of the displaced have arrived in the camps with no personal documents. “This is exactly what we are focusing on,” responded a government official defensively. “While getting their basic needs addressed, it is quite a task to prepare such documentation for them.” The most pressing issues, he continued, are water, sanitation, medical assistance and overcrowding.
This last is perhaps the most egregious of all, inevitably impacting on the other problems that are bound to crop up in such a situation. The government official said that the rate and magnitude of the influx into the camps has made it nearly impossible for the authorities to deal with the situation. He went on to assure that measures are being taken to address the overcrowding in the camps, however, including nearly 4500 people having recently been transferred from Vavuniya to a newly established camp in Anuradhapura District. “Similarly from Trincomalee and Mannar there were relocations,” he said. “The situation is getting better.”
By any standard, however, a massive amount of work remains to be done. With so many people forced to live together in ‘temporary’ camps, medical concerns have been among the foremost anxieties. “About 600 medical staff members have been deployed by the government to Menik Farm in Vavuniya, which is the largest IDP camp,” an aid worker said, saying that the number of medical consultations per day has been rising steadily. The most urgent medical issues ranged from dysentery, malaria and hepatitis to chicken pox, dengue and other viral diseases. In Vavuniya, he noted, as of 12 June nearly 12,200 cases of chicken pox had been reported. As of the same date, another medical doctor noted that Vavuniya had seen some 2139 cases of Hepatitis A.
Even beyond epidemic outbreaks, more-general medical concerns have been hard to deal with effectively. Aid agencies have been reporting that, of the 283,000 currently living in the camps in the north, around 75,000 are women and girls of reproductive age who need basic hygiene support and reproductive-health care. Furthermore, an estimated 6000 of these are pregnant and in urgent need of services, including lifesaving obstetric care. “The government, together with aid agencies, are organising mobile clinics covering surgical, antenatal, gynaecological care and family planning once a month in all IDP camps,” said the aid worker. Another aid worker warns that sexually transmitted diseases have become a major concern amongst the displaced population. “The only remedy is to settle them and give them a normal life as fast as it can be done,” he said.
Dru Chandrasekera is a journalist based in Colombo.
Read more stories of post-war Sri Lanka in the July issue:
'Repugnant fillip' Himal Southasian commentary
'13th hotly debated Amendment and beyond' by Jayampathy Wickramaratne
'Spice island or bland nation?' By Nalaka Gunawardene
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