Sudanese Clinic Fights To Stay Open

Lara Logan: Shortage Of Aid May Force Refugee Camp Clinic To Close

(CBS)  Dr. Sayed Bakhiet's day has just begun and he's already in a rush.

Tiny 9-month-old Mohammed Yaqub has arrived at his clinic run by the Sudanese Red Crescent — the Muslim equivalent of the Red Cross — and he's seriously ill.

"Diarrhea, vomiting, high grade fever," says Sayed.

Moments later, Dr. Sayed is called to help a 3-year-old boy who's convulsing in his father's arms. At the same time, a young girl collapses after walking to the clinic in labor. Twenty-year-old Kaltoum Omar gives birth to a boy — a month premature. Dr. Sayed fights to keep him alive, but says his only chance is to go to the hospital.

This overstretched clinic itself may not survive, reports CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan. It's one of only two medical facilities serving more than 40,000 people here in Zam Zam camp in North Darfur, but it's due to close in a few weeks for lack of money.

There was no shortage of funding when the crisis in Darfur began three years ago, with fighting between local rebels and the government of Sudan, allied with Arab militias. With whole villages abandoned as people fled the fighting, foreign aid money came pouring into camps like this.

Today, conditions in the camps are still brutal, and these peoples' need still great, but international interest — and donations — are fading.

There are 20,000 people living here, but that's just a fraction of the 2 million people in Darfur who've been forced out of their homes and have to live in camps like this. There's little or no shelter from the harsh desert climate and they rely entirely on aid for their survival.

That aid comes primarily from organizations like the International Rescue Committee, which run three camps in North Darfur.

But even they can't reach everyone. Fatima Hamid has been in this camp for five months, but is still classified as a "new arrival," and therefore receives no help. Fatima fled her village after it was attacked and now lives in this tattered shelter with her six children. There's no way to earn money, so she sends them into town to beg.

"How much do your children get from begging?" Logan asks her.

"Just a little, it's enough for only one meal," Fatima says. "They eat that meal and then go out again the next day."

The IRC's Carmen Lowry says the only way to help Fatima and others like her is to keep donor funds flowing.

"When funds dip and contributions are lower it means people have to make some very difficult choices," Lowry says. "It means that organizations that are running clinics in camps have to decide 'Well, tomorrow we have to stop providing services for these clinics.'"

That's exactly what's at stake for Dr. Sayed's Red Crescent clinic, if a new donor isn't found in the next few weeks.

On this day, in spite of all his efforts, Dr. Sayed could not save Kaltoum Omar's baby who died less than an hour after he was born. He says his patients are afraid of what will happen to his other patients once he's gone.

"To whom you are going to leave us? This is what they said. To whom you are going to leave us?" Sayed says. "And we tell them that we hope God helps them."

If the world forgets about Darfur, that faith may be all these people have to sustain them.