South Sudan Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for International Development
Mark Lazarowicz
Main Page: Mark Lazarowicz (Labour (Co-op) - Edinburgh North and Leith)Department Debates - View all Mark Lazarowicz's debates with the Department for International Development
(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Bain
My hon. Friend is right to draw the House’s attention to the growing disaster. The UN’s best estimate is that 10,000 people have lost their lives in the conflict in the past month alone. As we know, the impact of conflict is always felt most profoundly by the most vulnerable. Women and children in South Sudan are bearing a particularly harsh burden in a conflict that is not of their making. The UN has also said that health facilities in many states of South Sudan are already beginning to creak at the margins. There are shortages of blood and transfusion supplies. There is one hospital at which 192 patients are awaiting surgery pending blood becoming available. That is the scale of the crisis that the violence is beginning to produce among the weakest in South Sudanese society.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
Is not a serious development the fact that refugees are now moving to surrounding countries, such as Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia and, of course, Sudan? That is putting further pressure on those countries, and further exacerbating the difficulty of getting humanitarian support to people who are now dispersed over a wide area.