By Frank Kamuntu
More than 1,200 children under age 5 have died in nine camps in war-scarred Sudan in the past five months because of a deadly combination of measles and malnutrition, the U.N.’s refugee agency said Tuesday.
The UNHCR said the deaths, between May 15 and Sept. 14, were documented by its teams in the While Nile province, where thousands of Sudanese have sheltered as fighting has raged for six months between rival generals, in the capital of Khartoum and elsewhere.
“Dozens of children are dying every day — a result of this devastating conflict and a lack of global attention,” said the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi.
Sudan plunged into chaos in mid-April, when simmering tensions between the military, led by Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, commanded by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, exploded into open warfare.
The conflict has turned the capital and other urban areas into battlefields. At least 5,000 people have been killed and over 12,000 wounded, according to Volker Perthes, the U.N. envoy in the country, who announced his resignation last week. The actual casualty toll, he said, is likely much higher.
More than 2.5 million people fled their homes, including over 1 million who crossed into Sudan’s neighboring countries, according to the U.N.’s migration agency.
The fighting wrecked the country’s health care system, with many hospitals and medical facilities out of service.
Local health care workers “desperately need the support of the international community to prevent further deaths and the spread of outbreaks,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization.
The U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warned Monday that the conflict, coupled with hunger, disease, displacement and destruction of livelihoods, threatens to consume the entire country.
OCHA said about half of the country’s population — some 25 million people — needs humanitarian assistance by the end of this year. They include about 6.3 million who are “one step away from famine,” the agency said.
The U.N. refugee agency said many displaced Sudanese are suffering from measles and malnutrition. Many refugees arriving in South Sudan and Ethiopia also have contracted measles and are malnourished. Acute malnutrition among children was reported in Chad, which hosts the largest number of Sudanese refugees since the conflict began.
The U.N. children’s agency has also warned that “many thousands of newborns” may die in Sudan by the end of the year because of a lack of access to treatment.
