Hundreds of children starving to death in Sudan – aid group
At least 498 children in Sudan, including two dozen babies at a state orphanage, have starved to death as a result of food shortages caused by fighting between state forces and rival paramilitary troops, according to Save the Children.
“Never did we think we would see children dying from hunger in such numbers, but this is now the reality in Sudan,” Arif Noor, Save the Children’s country director in Sudan, said in a statement on Tuesday.
The organization reported that since the conflict broke out in Khartoum in mid-April, 57 of its nutrition centers have shut down, leaving 31,000 children without treatment for malnutrition and related illnesses across the country.
Staff in the remaining 108 functional facilities have “few options on how to treat” severely ill children because therapeutic food stocks are “critically low,” with emergency reserves being used in the “most extreme cases,” according to the agency.
The outbreak of hostilities on April 15 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has killed around 4,000 people, according to official figures. The UN migration agency said earlier this month that about 3.9 million people have been displaced both inside and outside of the African country.
In June, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced a joint operation in which hundreds of children and caregivers were evacuated from the Mygoma Orphanage in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, to a “safer location.”
The move came after local medics and a volunteer organization that supports the state-run facility said the children were dying of severe malnutrition and dehydration.
UNICEF said at the time that more than 13.6 million children remained at risk across Sudan and were in desperate need of lifesaving assistance.
Save the Children said on Tuesday that at least 50 children died of starvation in a state orphanage in Khartoum “after fighting prevented staff from accessing the building to care for them.”
At least 132 malnutrition-related child deaths were recorded in the eastern Gedaref province, while a minimum of 316 children, mostly under the age of five, died in the southern White Nile province, it added.
“The looting of UN warehouses, the burning of the therapeutic food factory, and the lack of funding have put significant strain on supplies of therapeutic nutritional products across the country,” Noor said.
