Vanni, a humanitarian catastrophe in the making

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Vanni, a humanitarian catastrophe in the making - the hospitals

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Since the escalation of hostilities in early 2006, the movement of goods and people into the northern part of Sri Lanka was restricted by the government. Ever since the attention of the government’s military campaign shifted to north in 2008, the blockade was escalated to essential items such as food, medicine and fuel. The government has used the food, medicine and other essentials as a weapon to starve and cripple the locals out of their homes into refugee camps administrated by the military.

As part of this strategy, the Government forced the International NGOs out of the region citing security risks in September 2008. Later in November 2008, TRO (Tamil Rehabilitation Organisations) – the only remaining humanitarian agency’s funds were forfeited by the state.

Since, then the fighting has closed-in from all fronts effectively trapping over 400,000 civilians of which majority are internally displaced and a significant section of whom over three times in the past 12 months.

The population of four northern districts are now confined to handful of villages creating a crisis of an unprecedented level on many fronts. Basics such as food, water, sanitation and shelter are hard to meet in a place with such high population density. Providing enough shelter facilities for air raids and shelling is another challenge for what the region is facing on the daily basis. Schools are converted to hospitals with minimal equipment and other resources to cope with the influx of injured.

Total population ~400,000

Hospitals functioning (temporary) 02

Hospitals functioning (permanent) 01

Hospitals closed 15

Nurses serving 30 ~ 40

Beds in hospitals (including temporary) 250 ~ 300

Intensive care unit (functional) 01

The majority victims of the indiscriminate shelling are children and elderly who are unable to react in time to the warnings of the in-coming shells. Due to the lack of communication facilities and the dangers in visiting places that already came under artillery shelling, the real extent of the carnage are often not known at the beginning. Deaths remain unreported when the victims are alone or the whole group or neighbourhood perishes.

NorthEast Secretariat on Human Rights (NESoHR) a grassroot human rights organisation is making efforts to compile the data on bi-weekly and monthly basis from the records of the hospitals in the region. The victims from 01 to 16th January 2009 is documented and available now.