HOMELAND SECURITY POLICY INSTITUTE GROUP

Rebels allow polio vaccinations to begin in Sudan's Darfur region
By Times wire
Published January 11, 2005

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Rebels opened sections of Sudan's war-ravaged Darfur region on Monday to allow health workers to vaccinate children younger than 5 years old against polio, the paralyzing illness that re-emerged in Africa's largest country last year in the midst of civil war.

The United Nations children fund, UNICEF; the World Health Organization; and the Sudanese Health Ministry began a three-day campaign that aims to inoculate 6-million children against the virus throughout Sudan.

Joanna van Gerpen, UNICEF's representative in Sudan, said 112 people have so far tested positive for the virus in 17 of the country's 26 states. Most cases were reported in the capital, Khartoum, the Red Sea state and the three states in Darfur, the western region where government troops and Arab militias are fighting two main rebel groups.

"While the number does not seem very large, the concern is that the virus has re-emerged," van Gerpen said in a telephone interview after launching the national program in the capital of the Red Sea state, Port Sudan.

The Sudan Liberation Army, one of the two rebel groups, opened areas it controls in North Darfur state to health teams, including workers from UNICEF.

U.N. MAY SEND PEACEKEEPERS: The U.N. Security Council said Monday that it would speedily consider sending peacekeepers to Sudan to support a new peace deal and urged the new government of national unity to work actively to end the conflict in western Darfur.

If implemented, the peace deal signed Sunday in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, would end 40 years of civil war that has caused 2-million deaths, mainly from war-induced famine and disease, uprooted 4-million people, and forced 600,000 to flee the country altogether.