January 23, 2008 at 08:10:45

War in DRC Did Not End Today: 45,000 Die Per Month

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By Georgianne Nienaber (about the author) Page 1 of 1 page(s)

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For OpEdNews: Georgianne Nienaber - Writer

The war in Congo did not end today.

Just as important, a critical study was released which, hopefully, will jar the mainstream press into abandoning its defense of gorillas and focus on the human beings who are being ignored, abandoned and betrayed in the DRC.

This woman died and world press took no notice-- Copyright keith harmon snow

A new International Rescue Committee (IRC) survey has found that 5,400,000 people have died from war-related causes in Congo since 1998. The study does not mince words and terms the war “the world’s deadliest documented conflict since WW II.”

This translates to 45,000 people per month who have been the victims of war, disease, and in this writer’s opinion, the malevolent, occult motives of conservation NGO’s.

The majority of these beautiful Congolese people died from non-violent causes such as malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition—easily preventable and treatable conditions when people have access to health care and nutritious food.

The mountain gorillas in this region have their own personal veterinarian and millions have been spent on studying, among other things, the decay rate of gorilla dung, while people lie dying on the forest floor and women and children are brutally raped and abused.

For once, the term “gorilla” does not appear in a report from this region.

Please take the time to read the 26 page summary here:

www.theirc.org/special-report/congo-forgotten-crisis.html

The IRC has conducted five mortality surveys since 2000. The first four studies, conducted between 2000 and 2004, estimated that 3.9 million people had died since 1998

This fifth and latest survey, covering the period from January 2006 to April 2007, aims to evaluate the current humanitarian situation in DR Congo by providing an update on mortality. Investigators used a three-stage cluster sampling technique to survey 14,000 households in 35 health zones across all 11 provinces, resulting in wider geographic coverage than any of the previous IRC surveys.

The mortality rate (CMR) of 2.2 deaths per 1,000 per month is 57 percent higher than the average rate for sub-Saharan Africa.

As OpEd News has consistently reported, 450,000 people have been displaced in the last six months of 2007.

Georgianne Nienaber is an investigative environmental and political writer. She lives in rural northern Minnesota, New Orleans and South Florida. Her articles have appeared in The Society of Professional Journalists' Online (more...)

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