The four-year crisis in South Sudan has led to nearly 400,000 excess deaths, with half of them suspected to be the result of violence, a report by a UK health authority said.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 26th September, 2018) The four-year crisis in South Sudan has led to nearly 400,000 excess deaths, with half of them suspected to be the result of violence, a report by a UK health authority said.
The "Estimates of crisis-attributable mortality," published by the London school of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, used statistics to calculate death rate in the absence of the crisis and compared it against the total.
"We estimate 383,000 people died in excess of the counterfactual baseline during the analysis period, out of an average population of about 10 million, with the death toll ... highest in 2016-2017," the study said.
The authors said their findings underscored the need to remove humanitarian aid barriers and achieve an urgent resolution to the conflict, which has been ravaging the country since December 2013.
South Sudan gained independence from Sudan following a referendum in 2011, in which majority of the voters supported the move. In 2013, a civil war erupted in the country, as South Sudan's President Salva Kiir of the Dinka tribe accused rebel leader Riek Machar, an ethnic Nuer, of planning a coup.
