Word: goma
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...World Health Organization confirmed that a dysentery epidemic among Rwandan refugees in Goma, Zaire has replaced cholera as the number one killer and could claim up to 45,000 lives. Epidemiologists now say the number of cholera cases has dropped by half, but that dysentery -- a contagious, bloody diarrhea that is much harder to treat -- has more than made up for the decline. U.S. Army convoys delivered 100,000 gallons of fresh water, a triumph over a bottleneck at Goma's tiny airport, but far short of the 1.25 million gallons needed daily to meet the refugees' basic needs...
...Ndosho orphanage nine miles outside of Goma, they hang onto the clothes of any adult in sight, and when night falls and the air grows cold, they cry for their mothers. "You hold them and they don't want to let you go," says Julienne Mukeba, 24, a law student from Kinshasa who is volunteering at the camp. They arrive by the hundreds, some orphaned, some wrenched from their parents during the crush at the border crossing, some abandoned by the starving. Many are too young to tell their stories; the staff make up names. And many don't last...
Even if the doctors manage to treat the diseases, survivors need to be fed and sheltered. Goma alone requires 600 metric tons of food a day, 1 million blankets, 200,000 rolls of plastic sheeting, 200,000 jerricans, 80 water tankers and 90 to 100 trucks to carry food the 497 miles from the Ugandan capital of Entebbe -- and these numbers are sure to grow. When the Red Cross began its food distribution, a child was trampled when the crowd, desperate that there would not be enough to go around, surged forward. "If it runs out, or if it doesn...
...World Food Program was able to fly four loaded planes into Goma during the first desperate weekend. But two more relief planes were turned back because of mortar fire, and, unimaginably, a strike by Zaire air traffic controllers arguing with the French over who had responsibility for running the airport. Zairian officials were demanding bribes for landing rights, and blocked some relief flights so that commercial planes could continue to use the airport...
...pound, at around 130,000 m.p.h., into Jupiter's dense atmosphere, Steve Maran, an understandably elated NASA astronomer, called the sight "the greatest one-two-three punch of all time." Meanwhile, Filippo Grandi, director of emergency aid for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, surveyed the unimaginable conditions around Goma, % the sleepy Zairean border town that had suddenly filled with over a million terrified Rwandans. More than a million other refugees, also without food, running water, sanitation and medical facilities, were crowding into other locations. The understandably despairing Grandi said, "We're talking about four sites that are the biggest...