‘Heartbreaking’ to See Deaths in Africa : Canadian Aids Starving Children

In a flimsy hut of branches and grass on the edge of the desert in Sudan, Diane MacKie cares for starving infants, close to death from dysentery, tuberculosis and a host of other ailments.

It is a far cry from the brightly painted, well-equipped children’s wards of a Toronto hospital where she worked until two months ago.

As another disaster of famine and disease gathers pace in Africa, this time centered on the countless thousands of Ethiopian refugees pouring into Sudan, most of the world has watched from a distance.

But hundreds of volunteer aid workers like MacKie have hurried to the area, forsaking the comforts of their homes to accept hardship, depression and the risk of disease.

Personal Responsibility

Most are doctors and nurses but they also include engineers and other specialists. Many say they came because they feel a personal responsibility to help when disaster happens.

“I think this may be the last time I do something like this. I feel I’m getting too old for it,” said MacKie, 34. “But I can’t be sure. It’s very tempting to come when you see pictures of a major disaster like this. It’s very difficult just to sit at home and let it happen.”

MacKie typifies many aid workers here. A Canadian Red Cross volunteer, she has been in disaster zones twice before, spending six months at Cambodian refugee camps in Thailand in 1980 and four months in southwest Ethiopia in 1982.

“We usually stay for about six months. I’ve been here two,” she said. Normally employed at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, she plunged suddenly into refugee work.

Saw Pictures on TV

“I saw the pictures of the Cambodian refugees on television. I phoned the Red Cross one day to see if they needed help and six days later I was in Thailand. It was as quick as that.”

Pale and composed, MacKie looks younger than her years and wears her fair hair close-cropped to cut down the risk of picking up dirt and disease in the Wad Sharifee refugee camp where she works near this east Sudanese border town. Her home is a room in the Swiss Red Cross compound here.

Like many other volunteers, MacKie says she tries to steel herself against being emotionally affected by the plight of the refugees, but that it is impossible not to be moved.

“You’ve always got to put a barrier around yourself. There is so much suffering, it would destroy you otherwise.

“But sure, it still affects you. It’s heartbreaking to watch so many children die,” she said.

MacKie added: “The worst time for me was when I first came here and we were setting up the kids’ hospital. Every single child died, whatever we did, because they were so weak and ill.”

There are rewards too, however, in giving help and eventually seeing results.

Starting to Get Better

“Things are starting to get a little better. Until 10 days ago, we didn’t have any food and hardly any water. Now we’ve been able to start intensive feeding with some children.”

The difference has been an emergency airlift of food from Europe organized by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Thirty tons of food a day has been flown in to provide for an estimated 330,000 Ethiopians in camps here who have fled the famine and guerrilla warfare of their own country.

But the amounts coming in remain pitifully small and the airlift is to end in a week or two. Many refugees are receiving just the minimum to sustain life, some even less, and the medical teams still have hard choices to make.

“At the hospital we’ve had to decide to turn the weakest away, the ones who are so starved they have little chance of survival. That way we can help the stronger ones,” MacKie said.

“Refusing medicine and food is very hard, but the parents of the sickest children are very accepting.”

30 Deaths a Day

Doctors say about 30 children a day are still dying at Wad Sharifee, a collection of thousands of crude thatch shelters that is home for 62,000 refugees.

Each day, MacKie gets up just after 5 a.m. and travels by jeep along desert tracks for the 40 minutes it takes to reach Wad Sharifee. She works there all day, supervising the intensive feeding of 40 children in the hospital and providing what medicines are available.

The Red Cross plans eventually to build a hut for doctors and nurses to live in at the camp to save traveling time. But they will then have no relief from the squalor and hardship there.

“I think you’ve got to have a feeling for the Third World to want to do this. It was a shock to be plunged into the camps in Thailand when I first went there, but I traveled a lot when I was young and that helped me stay there,” MacKie said.

“I’ve told many people back at the hospital in Toronto about work in the camps and a lot say, ‘Gee, I’d really like to do something like that’--but I don’t know how many eventually do,” MacKie added.

‘Expected Just a Tent’

“I’m lucky with the conditions here. We’ve even got running water and electricity in the compound. I expected just a tent.”

Other aid workers from many countries tell stories similar to MacKie’s. Though details vary, their feelings are the same.

Martin Weber, a Swiss doctor from Berne leading the medical team at Wad Sharifee, first came in 1982 when the camp was tiny.

“Now I’m back to see how we can solve the difficulties here and what resources we need. But as soon as we settle one thing, another problem springs up,” he said.

Kedar Neupane, from Nepal, heads the U.N. refugee agency in the area. First working in Sudan on development, he said he could not ignore the refugee problem when it sprang up.

“It is frustrating because of all the obstacles. But sometimes you can feel happy as well that you saved a few lives and that you can see improvements from what you do,” he said.