While headlines are filled with hyped-up stories about global warming, the Palestinian humanitarian crisis and Hollywood actors, true tragedies, such as what is happening in the Democratic Republic of Congo, are often overlooked.

Warfare, disease and malnutrition are killing Congolese at a rate of 45,000 per month, a study released Tuesday by the International Rescue Committee (irc) has found. Combined with Congo’s 1998-2003 war, a total of 5.4 million people have died in the past decade—nearly 1,500 per day.

Congo’s mortality rate is 57 percent higher than that of the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, and more than 8 percent of the nation’s 66 million population has died since 1998, according to the aid organization.

“Congo’s loss is equivalent to the entire population of Denmark or the state of Colorado perishing within a decade,” irc president George Rupp said.

Although many Congolese deaths, particularly in eastern DR Congo, come from open warfare between the government and rival factions, as well as ethnic violence, the majority come from resultant diseases such as malaria, diarrhea and pneumonia.

On the national scale, conflict, displacement and disease have killed the economy and ruined infrastructure. For some Congolese, reaching a doctor can take days, and people in critical condition, afflicted by the area’s many tropical diseases, are typically transported on homemade stretchers down jungle paths and often die before reaching the clinic or hospital.

Congolese measure such distances not in miles or kilometers, but in how many hours it takes to walk there.

“We have lost four children in four months to fever,” Therese Tchausi said. Hers were like the 727,000 people who died in addition to normal mortality rates between January 2006 and April 2007. About half of the deaths were children age 5 and younger (bbc, January 23).

“Life here is difficult,” Bilenda Francois said, “we live like dogs” (ibid.).

Although the war officially stopped five years ago, its aftermath has seen rampant poverty, disease and, in reality, continuing warfare. The government and rebel groups are vying for power over the nation’s people and its rich natural resources, and troop and rebel clashes along ethnic lines have kept the Congolese soil soaked with blood.

A deal is underway in the city of Goma to call a ceasefire to some of the bloodiest violence, a months-long conflict that has left almost half a million people homeless in the last year.

The negotiations are part of a much larger multinational attempt to slow the death rate, which is far higher than anywhere else in Africa. This, despite a decade of international effort, the presence of the world’s biggest peacekeeping force, billions in international aid, and even a momentous democratic election in 2006.

The destruction and spreading death in the Democratic Republic of Congo indicate that all these efforts are not enough to save the Congolese. They have already failed more than 5 million of them.

But there is hope for the Congo! Even for the 45,000 who will be lost this month. For the inspiring future for the Congolese and afflicted people everywhere, request The Incredible Human Potential, by Herbert W. Armstrong.

For more coverage of Africa, read “Kenya Exposes Democracy’s Flaw,” “The Big Men” and “A Continent in Chaos.”