Hat tip and thanks to Eric Reeves @sudanreevesHunger in W #Darfur: people are eating tree leaves, raiding anthills for food, and eating imbaz - waste from milled oilseeds, usually for animals. Govt official says 22 children have died of malnutrition in Mornei, 83km south of WD capital Geneina https://t.co/T3kJJ75tyu
— Eddie Thomas (@eddiethomas88) March 10, 2024
Photo: Displaced people and returnees trek between the towns of Rotriak and Bentiu in Rubkona County, Unity State in South Sudan as roads become impassable for vehicles due to severe flooding. Intense rains make it difficult for humanitarian partners to access displaced people with aid in most Unity State counties. It also makes it challenging to move returnees from Sudan to their final destinations as roads become impassable. OCHA/Alioune Ndiaye
Source: https://www.unocha.org/latest/news-and-stories
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For many South Sudanese, Sudan was a refuge during their country’s civil war. Now WFP is assisting returnees, as they confront fresh hardship in their homeland
When Aker Monychol Biar’s husband was killed in the latter years of South Sudan’s civil war, she headed north to Sudan, seeking safety and a job to pay for her children’s education.
“There was nothing to eat and I needed to work for my children,” says Aker, a mother of five, who hails from South Sudan’s northern county of Malakal. “I’d heard there was manual work (in Sudan) that I could do.”
Now, she is back in Malakal after fleeing another war - this time in Sudan. Aker recounts her odyssey sitting outside a temporary shelter that she shares with other displaced people, as she feeds a special food supplement to fight malnutrition to her youngest child, an 18-month-old boy.
So far, nearly 300,000 people have crossed into South Sudan from Sudan since conflict erupted in that neighbouring country in April. The vast majority of new arrivals are South Sudanese.
Each has a variation of Aker’s story. In recent years, not just conflict, but climate shocks, soaring food prices and a depreciating currency converged to create a hunger crisis in South Sudan, forcing many families to leave in search of livelihoods and education in neighbouring Sudan.
Now, with another war raging, South Sudanese like Aker are going home - to face the same toxic mix of challenges that drove their exodus, but with even fewer resources to surmount them. As they continue streaming in, humanitarian organizations are struggling to respond as funding runs dry.
“We are seeing families turn from one disaster to another as they flee desperate circumstances in Sudan only to find despair in South Sudan,” says World Food Programme (WFP) Representative in South Sudan, Mary-Ellen McGroarty.
Struggling to meet vast needs
Since the beginning of Sudan’s crisis, WFP has reached a quarter of a million people crossing into South Sudan with food and cash, along with high-energy biscuits and support to treat and prevent malnutrition. But it is not enough.
“WFP is struggling to meet the vast humanitarian needs at the border,” McGroarty says, “but we lack the resources needed to provide the response that’s required.”
The majority of those fleeing Sudan arrive through a border crossing near Renk in South Sudan’s Upper Nile State - where the rainy season has turned the dusty land into a muddy mess.
Many of the newcomers are hungry, sick and exhausted. One in five children and more than a quarter of pregnant and breastfeeding women screened at the border are malnourished.
“It was a very hard journey. We didn’t have anything; no food, no water, no shelter, nothing. It was especially bad when it rained,” says South Sudanese mother Nyanchiu Pehok, who recently arrived in Renk with her eight children.
Nyanchiu went to Khartoum last year to attend her brother’s wedding. She decided to stay, hoping to earn a better living to support her family. She worked long hours washing clothes and cleaning houses, making sure her children never went to sleep hungry.
Then Sudan’s conflict broke out, forcing her to make the homeward journey. Nyanchiu’s youngest child, nine-month-old Cheng, became sick while the family was still in Khartoum.
The journey to South Sudan only made things worse. At a nutrition centre in Renk, Cheng tested positive for acute malnutrition.
“The humanitarian situation for returnees is unacceptable,” says WFP’s McGroarty. “It is the most vulnerable members of these communities – women, children, the elderly and people living with disabilities – who are suffering the most.”
Hard times ahead
WFP and other humanitarian agencies are working to move newly arrived families like Nyanchiu’s onwards from Renk as quickly as possible. The food-secure region has traditionally had only a bare-bones humanitarian presence. It has since been overwhelmed by the influx.
But moving people on - and meeting their most basic humanitarian needs - has been difficult. Besides insufficient funding, onward transport has been a challenge in an area with no suitable connecting roads.
Instead, people are relying on the White Nile, a tributary of the Nile River. The journey by boat to Malakal takes two to three days. From there, the displaced still have a long and difficult journey to reach the communities they choose to settle in, and an even more difficult journey to rebuild their livelihoods.
A couple of weeks ago, Aker made the river journey to Malakal with her family. WFP had provided them, and thousands of other travelers in recent months, with vitamin-packed high energy biscuits - enough to tide them over for the trip.
In Malakal, she received sorghum, oil, pulses and salt from WFP to feed her family. Funding constraints, however, mean the agency can only distribute half the amount of food families need. In practical terms, this equates to a little less than 300 grams of food per person, per day.
On a recent day, Aker cooked the pulses on an open fire as her children sat on the ground nearby. She had no money to add in spices or vegetables, but the children still ate the food with gusto.
“I am lucky because I received this food, but I don’t know how others will survive today if they get nothing," Aker says. "We’re facing very bad conditions and need a lot of things, but we are trying to support each other and trade what we can.”
More families are arriving in South Sudan. Many have been living in Khartoum and elsewhere in Sudan for years, decades, or even generations. Now they are moving to rural areas of South Sudan, without the skills they need to restart their lives.
They have survived difficult journeys. But for many, it’s only the beginning.
The World Food Programme (WFP) is providing life-saving support to families at the border and at their final destination, but more resources are critical to ensure these families are not left behind. Across all of South Sudan, WFP has a US$536 million funding gap for the next six months.
Learn more about WFP's work in South Sudan and Sudan
View original: https://www.wfp.org/stories/south-sudanese-head-home-war-torn-sudan
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Women’s vigil in North Darfur capital decries healthcare collapse
Vigil by women activists in El Fasher on Thursday (Photo: RD)
Women’s activists organised a vigil in the North Darfur capital, El Fasher, on Thursday to protest the deteriorating healthcare conditions, and what they called the failure of the Ministry of Health and the state government to support the Specialised Maternity Hospital.
Shortages of medicines and equipment at hospitals has become a country-wide crisis, as logistics, supply, and power outages stress facilities beyond their limits.
The participants in Thursday’s vigil told Radio Dabanga of their dissatisfaction at the facilities at the specialised obstetrics and gynaecology hospital, which is the main reference hospital, and the only one of its kind in the state. They lament that “the hospital lacks even the simplest equipment to provide treatment in the fields of obstetrics and gynaecology.” they say, “which has resulted in the deaths of a large number of mothers and newborns”.
The medical staff lack essentials such as surgical gloves and blood for transfusion, the activists say. The electricity supply is subject to frequent outages, and “for the past four months, the hospital has relied entirely on initiatives by public volunteers and the support committee”.
The vigil appealed to the state government and the Ministry of Health to pay urgent attention to the conditions at the hospital, as they fear ”the situation may collapse”.
The protesters decried the murders, rapes, and kidnappings in North Darfur state, pointing to the deteriorating conditions of women in various fields. “Women are subject to continuous violations in the centres and neighbourhoods.”
Activist Asmaa El Nour, one of the participants in the vigil, told Radio Dabanga that the vigil demanded the provision of necessary medicines to save women’s lives, especially at the specialised hospital for obstetrics and gynaecology in El Fasher, and criticised the state health ministry’s failure in doing its part.
National crisis
Earlier this month, Dabanga reported that blood transfusion bags, anaesthesia, gauze, solutions, and suture threads are among the medical supplies that are in critically short supply in the South Darfur capital of Nyala, as medical facilities are swamped with an influx of conflict-related cases. Health care in South Kordofan is suffering from a shortage of medicines.
The Children’s Hospital in El Gedaref, eastern Sudan, recorded figures of 132 children who died as a result of a surge in malnutrition-related diseases. According to recent reports, there has been a marked increase in the number of disease cases and fatalities, notably within camps providing shelter to those uprooted by the conflict in Khartoum. From April to July, the Children’s Hospital documented a total of 365 malnutrition cases, which they state, translates to a 20 per cent mortality rate among afflicted children.
The monthly death toll saw 33 casualties in April, followed by 41 in May, 24 in June, and another 34 in July.
Apart from massive logistical challenges to distribute vital equipment and medicines brought about by the war, a lack of fuel means that hospitals cannot always run generators to power equipment. As reported by Dabanga this week, a kidney failure patient died in Port Sudan, after a dialysis centre was struck by a power outage.
Compounded with the scarcity of essential medical supplies required to provide adequate care for over 360 patients, among whom at least 100 have been uprooted from Khartoum due to the destructive clashes that ravaged the capital’s healthcare infrastructure.
View original: https://www.dabangasudan.org/en/all-news/article/womens-vigil-in-north-darfur-capital-decries-healthcare-collapse
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