(Adds further WFP comment)

By Opheera McDoom

KHARTOUM, July 31 (Reuters) - Malnutrition rates for young children have risen above emergency levels in West Darfur's capital el-Geneina and the surrounding camps, a preliminary survey by Irish aid agency Concern said.

The emergency threshold for Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) is 15 percent but the Concern survey in the el-Geneina area of western Sudan found the rate among children under 5-years old to be more than two percentage points above that.

Concern Country Director Janu Rao told Reuters on Tuesday immediate action was needed to prevent a worsening of the Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM).

"The results reveal an increase in moderate malnutrition amongst the under-5 population with a GAM of 17.4 percent and SAM of 1.4 percent," the preliminary report said.

In 2006, 12.3 percent of children under 5 were moderately malnourished, it added.

"This result is alarming as this survey comes at the start of the traditional 'hunger gap', with harvests not due until October/November," the report said.

About 94,000 Darfuris live in camps surrounding el-Geneina town. They fled the rape, pillage and murder that began when Sudan's government countered a rebel uprising in early 2003.

While 2.5 million people have been driven from their homes to miserable camps, the world's largest aid operation helps some 4.2 million overall, including those who remained in remote villages but are cut off from normal life and their livelihoods.

Almost 13,000 humanitarian workers providing relief in difficult and dangerous conditions have brought the crisis under control and below emergency levels.

Rao, whose aid agency Concern has worked in Darfur since 2002, said the rise in the malnutrition rate is due in part to a World Food Programme policy focusing food aid on camp residents, while people in towns who cannot afford to buy supplies at the market go without.

"It's very hard to determine who is a host and who is an IDP (internally displaced person)," Rao told Reuters. "Geneina is a big town."

He also blamed increasingly dirty drinking water which has caused diarrhoea for the rise in malnutrition.

WFP said it was giving 50 percent rations to the host population in el-Geneina and 100 percent to those in camps and had not changed its policy from last year, when malnutrition rates were below emergency levels.

During the hunger gap most of the host population also gets 100 percent rations and WFP said it was giving additional food aid to another 48,000 children in a schools feeding programme.

"We would suggest that as 50 percent of the GAM children were reported sick in the two weeks prior to the survey that water and sanitation would be the place to look," said WFP spokeswoman Emilia Casella.

Experts estimate 200,000 people have died of violence and disease in Darfur since the conflict began. Khartoum puts the death toll at 9,000 and almost daily state-owned media is reporting that 30 or even 40 percent of Darfuris in camps are going back home.

The government has said refugee numbers in Darfur are inflated because people are attracted to free aid in the camps.

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