Famine in South Sudan
May 20, 2017
Famine affects over 100 000 individuals in a country struggling through a violent civil war, where aid workers risk their lives to provide support, hindered by denial of access. Sharmila Devi reports.
Asunta wiped the tears from her face with a blanket as she cradled her 4-year-old son Riak, who lay listless from malnutrition and suspected acute anaemia. The Al Sabah Children’s Hospital, the only facility of its kind in the South Sudanese capital Juba, had run out of blood and Asunta could not afford to buy any. Mercy Kolok of UNICEF who had accompanied The Lancet to the hospital immediately got on her mobile to arrange for a blood donation. The life-saving transfusion was on its way but Riak died barely an hour later. This is a familiar scenario for South Sudanese and foreign health workers trying to help millions of people in a country where civil war broke out in late 2013.
The first famine in 6 years was officially declared by the UN in parts of South Sudan in February, affecting more than 100 000 South Sudanese, with a further 1 million on the brink of starvation. Food aid is acting as life support for many, but a shortage of basic drugs condemns others to death. Aid officials accuse both government and multiple opposition forces of using hunger as a weapon of war, since aid is routinely denied access to the thousands displaced. Added to this are ethnic atrocities and massacres, rape, and oppressive security measures.
South Sudan, together with Yemen, Somalia, and Nigeria pose what the UN calls the biggest humanitarian crisis since 1945 as millions flee conflict and drought within their own countries or across borders (panel).
