Deaths of 77 orphans prompts inquiry in Sudan

By Andrew Heavens

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - The deaths of 77 children at Sudan's main orphanage has sparked an investigation, officials said on Tuesday, in a case that has lifted the lid on the plight of abandoned infants in Africa's largest state.

"We have seen the official figures and they are horrifying. I welcome the decision that there will be an investigation into the current situation at Mygoma," Nils Kastberg, UNICEF's Sudan representative, told Reuters, referring to the state-owned orphanage where the deaths occurred.

The manager of the charity operating in the Khartoum orphanage defended his record, telling Reuters he had saved thousands of children and adding that deaths were inevitable given the condition of babies when they arrived.

"The numbers were high... But last month we received 46 premature babies. Many of them were suffering from septicaemia. What am I going to do?" Mohamed Muhedin Elgemiabby, head of Ana Assudan, the charity contracted to care for the children in Mygoma, said.

"Most are delivered early. They were born in unhygienic areas. They are found in water canals, in sewers ... They need incubators but it is very difficult to find incubators."

The United Nations estimates hundreds of babies are abandoned in Khartoum every year by women in the predominantly Muslim country unable to bear the stigma of having a child outside marriage. Half of the infants die before getting help.

Most of those found on the streets of the capital are taken to Mygoma where authorities try to find new homes with families.

Khartoum state's ministry of social welfare on Tuesday told Reuters 77 children had died in the orphanage in September, the highest number recorded in four years.

"There is a committee which is there to give us details about everything, starting with the food," said Mona Mustapha Khogalai, the head of the ministry's social welfare department.

She said the death toll might be explained by higher than usual admissions of infants and their weakened condition.

"I think these may be some of the causes. Maybe there are other causes. I am waiting for the committee to give me their report," she said.

UNICEF, the U.N. children's agency, welcomed the investigation.

"It is bad enough that so many babies die every month in the streets of Khartoum," Kastberg told journalists.

"Those that survive are taken to an orphanage where too many of them subsequently die."

Elgemiabby said 77 deaths represented roughly 26 percent of the babies in the orphanage at the time. He said average death rates were from 12 to 20 percent.

"But the rates when the government was running Mygoma on its own from 1961 were horrible, horrible," he said. A UNICEF report based on research carried out in 2003 put Mygoma's mortality rate at 80 percent.

Ana Assudan (www.anaassudan.org/) said it took on a contract to work in the orphanage in 2007.

Khogalai said it was difficult to give an average for deaths at Mygoma as figures varied wildly from month to month.

She said that a set of mortality figures published by Khartoum newspaper Ajras al-Huriya showing between 15 and 41 deaths a month since January looked accurate.

(Editing by Michael Roddy)