The UN reported on Tuesday that thousands of infants are likely to perish throughout the war-torn nation by year’s end, and that more than 1,200 children had perished in refugee camps in Sudan since May.
Concerned about how the Sudanese crisis is affecting children’s health, the United Nations raised the alarm.
“On the back of a cruel disregard for civilians and the relentless attacks on health and nutrition services, UNICEF fears many thousands of newborns will die between now and the end of the year,” UN children’s agency spokesman James Elder told reporters in Geneva.
333,000 babies are expected to be born in the nation between October and December, he noted.
At the same time, he claimed that the nation’s nutrition services had been “devastated” by the conflict.
“Every month 55,000 children require treatment for the most lethal form of malnutrition, and yet in Khartoum less than one in 50 nutrition centres is functional. In West Darfur it’s one in 10,” Elder said.
Over 1,200 children under the age of five perished in nine refugee camps between May 15 and September 14, according to the UN refugee agency, which said its teams in Sudan’s White Nile state had found.
Allen Maina, the UNHCR’s chief of public health, told reporters in Geneva that the camps were primarily housing refugees from South Sudan and Ethiopia.
More than 500 suspected cases of cholera have also been recorded in other regions of the country, along with dengue and malaria outbreaks, the agency said. Additionally, 3,100 additional suspected cases of measles were also reported during this time.
