The United Nations (UN) relief agencies have reported the opening of a fifth food corridor into Iraq, the imminent return of more international staff and the dispatch of emergency medical supplies, but warned that rapidly dwindling chlorine supplies in the south could leave water untreated within weeks, with "potentially calamitous" results, reported the UN News Service.
"People have to understand that children who contract diarrhoea, never mind cholera, cannot retain their food. They wither away. And we are on the cusp of seeing contaminated water flow directly from the putrid main rivers into household pipes," said head of the Iraq office of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), Carel de Rooy at a daily briefing in Amman.
"What's needed now is an emergency shipment of about 400 tons of chlorine gas. Without it, we'll see many more child deaths by the end of this month." Adding her voice to the alarm, UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said: "The dirty water equation is a simple one. Young children have developing immune systems and low body weight. Add a bout of diarrhoea or cholera picked up from dirty water, and we can lose them very quickly."
On a more positive note the World Food Programme (WFP) said it has opened a fifth humanitarian food corridor with a 22-truck convoy from Kuwait carrying 880 tons of wheat flour, enough for 100,000 people for a month. The agency is already operating food corridors from Turkey, Iran, Jordan and Syria. — (menareport.com)
© 2003 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
