NEW YORK, Jan. 9 (UPI) -- The heavy toll of war and disease placed the Central African Republic and Somalia among the 10 most underreported crises of 2006, a new reports says.
The ninth annual list released Tuesday by international aid organization Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres also highlighted the lack of media attention given to people devastated by conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sri Lanka, Haiti, Colombia, Chechnya and central India.
"Many conflicts worldwide are profoundly affecting millions of people, yet they are almost completely invisible," MSF Executive Director Nicolas de Torrente said. "Haiti, for example, is just 50 miles from the United States and the plight of the population enduring relentless violence in its volatile capital Port-au-Prince received only half a minute of network coverage in an entire year."
The top 10 crises cited by MSF accounted for just 7.2 minutes of the 14,512 minutes on the three major U.S. television networks' nightly newscasts for 2006, according to Andrew Tyndall, publisher of the online media-tracking journal The Tyndall Report. Five of the countries listed were never mentioned at all.
The 2006 list also focused on the high human toll worldwide taken by tuberculosis and malnutrition. Cases of TB became even worse last year with the detection of a drug-resistant strain, while acute malnutrition contributes to the deaths of millions of children every year.
Additionally, MSF said that although conflicts in Sudan's Darfur region and eastern Chad received "significant" media attention in 2006, it did not translate into improved conditions for those caught in the crossfire.
