The World - News from Aug. 7, 1985

A pneumonia epidemic threatens tens of thousands of famine victims at Ethiopia’s Mekele relief camp, the deputy commissioner of Ethiopia’s Relief and Rehabilitation Commission reported. Berhane Deressa said the outbreak of pneumonia at the camp, 300 miles north of Addis Ababa, was due to the famine victims’ exposure to rain and cold. Red Cross officials at Mekele recently said the death rate at the camp, once as high as 500 people per month, had fallen to around 70 but that rains may have increased it to 150 per day.