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45,000 die monthly in Congo crisis

About 45,000 people die each month in Congo as the world's deadliest humanitarian crisis has failed to improve despite five years of relative peace in the Central African nation, according to a report released Tuesday.

The report estimates that 5.4-million Congolese died between 1998 and April 2007 because of conflict, most from the rampant disease and food shortages stemming from fighting.

The study found that life is still alarmingly precarious for Congolese despite the end of a 1998-2002 conflict that pulled in armies from half a dozen surrounding countries, and the country's first free and fair elections in more than four decades in 2006.

"When war ended in Congo there was the same level of dysfunction without the violence," said Les Roberts, a Columbia University professor who helped conduct the first surveys in Congo with the aid group International Rescue Committee.

Congo's monthly death rate of 2.2 deaths for each 1,000 people - essentially unchanged from the last survey in 2004 - is nearly 60 percent higher than the average for sub-Saharan Africa, according to the study by IRC and Australia's Burnet Institute, which researches epidemiological disease.

The vast majority of deaths were from nonviolent causes, such as malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia or malnutrition, the report said.

Outbreaks of easily treatable diseases like measles and whooping cough have been a major killer of children in Congo, a nation the size of Western Europe.

[Last modified January 23, 2008, 01:50:04]