Flight reductions to hurt aid work

A reduction in humanitarian flights within Sudan will compromise aid work because many areas of operations are either difficult to access or are insecure, according to aid workers.

"I have moved to so many places all over Southern Sudan on World Food Programme [WFP] flights," Alfred Alunyo, of the World Health Organization (WHO) Sudan office, said. Reducing the flights, he added, would make it difficult for emergency teams to respond to cholera and meningitis outbreaks because passable roads hardly exist.

The WFP on 10 June announced it would scale-back some of its flights in Sudan because of a funding shortfall. The UN agency said would reduce its Darfur helicopter fleet from six to five, and that it planned to fly from Khartoum to Darfur five days a week instead of six from 19 June.

Flights from Khartoum to Juba will be reduced from four to three a week, while those to Malakal will fall from three to two.

"With the security situation in Darfur being increasingly difficult, there are places that nobody will be able to get to without the helicopters," advised Emilia Casella, the WFP spokesperson in Khartoum. "If we [are] grounded, services to some very remote parts of Darfur will not be able to happen."

About 3,000 humanitarian workers use WFP helicopters each month to reach remote parts of Darfur, where travel by road is impossible due to insecurity, banditry or poor road conditions.

"We have been hobbling along, month to month," Casella complained.

Alun McDonald, information officer for the British charity Oxfam, said his agency's work of drilling boreholes, building latrines, and offering public health education to about 400,000 people in displaced persons camps and villages would be affected.

"We work in seven areas around Darfur," he said. "Four of those we can access only by the humanitarian air services because the roads are too dangerous," he explained.

WHO Southern Sudan's Ahmer Shaikh said his agency flies drugs, supplies and specimens, and up to 200 field staff a month. "Whenever there are outbreaks, we ask for emergency charters," he added.

A typical polio immunisation week, such as three conducted this year, uses the entire WFP fleet. "We go to all the payams, all the villages," Shaikh said.

Humanitarian workers were also bracing themselves for higher costs, given that a helicopter flight will now cost US$100 up from $40 per person from July.

"Using the flights is already expensive, compared to driving," McDonald said. "The [new] prices going up will be a strain on the budgets."

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