Nearly 80 percent of the 300,000 people who died in Darfur during the six-year armed rebellion were killed by diseases like diarrhea and not by violence, Belgian scientists said.
An analysis of Darfur conflict showed that after an initial peak of violent deaths, diseases associated with diarrhea became the major killers in the region, Reuters reported.Olivier Degomme and Debarati Guha-Sapir of the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of disasters in Brussels said more than 80 percent of excess deaths were not a result of the violence.
The researchers said their results showed that any reduction in humanitarian aid can cause death rates to increase sharply.
They added that a violent peak in early 2004 was followed by protracted phase of increased disease-related deaths caused by people living in camps with very poor sanitation conditions and little or no healthcare infrastructure.