About 15-20% of the 30,000 to 35,000 children housed in the Sri Lankan government run camps are suffering from ‘acute malnutrition’ according to NGOs and the UN.
“About thirty thousand to thirty five thousand children are sheltered in Manik Farm. Many of them are suffering from diseases and some still suffer from injuries sustained in the military operations. Fifteen to twenty percent of them are also suffering from acute malnutrition,” media reports in Colombo said quoting Dr. Vinya Ariyaratne, the executive director of Colombo based NGO Sarvodaya Shramadana Sangamaya.
It can take a few weeks to few months for these children to recover, Dr. Vinya has told media.
“The international standard is for 20 people to use one toilet, but in Manik Farm about 70 people are sharing one toilet,” he said.
Around five thousand internally displaced children from Vanni and sheltered in camps which are described as internment camps fenced with barbed wire are found to be malnourished, according to a survey conducted by a non-governmental organization.
Sri Lankan Health Ministry says it has been working together with Sarvodaya, UNICEF and others to improve the conditions in the internment camps.
Meanwhile, the high rate of malnutrition reported among children in camps for displaced people in Sri Lanka is a cause for concern, a senior UN official told the BBC’s Sinhala service.
The UN's representative on children and armed conflict said the government should set up special feeding programmes.
Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN's special representative on children and armed conflict, told the BBC Sinhala Service's Saroj Pathirana that the UN hopes to send a delegation to advise the government on a range of issues relating to child welfare.
"The malnutrition rates are very high, especially among young children, and [there is a] need for special feeding programmes and all those kind of things in the camps for the children.
"So, our sense is that the sooner they can get back to normalcy, to education, to schools, it is the best thing," she said.
Her comments follow concern expressed by Sri Lankan charity Sarvodaya about rates of chronic malnutrition in the camps.
She added that the UN is also concerned about the plight of children separated from their families.
"The delegation is to look into whether there is enough effort being taken to reunite them with parents," she said.
