Malaria, malnutrition rises among S. Sudanese returnees in Renk: MSF

October 4, 20203 (RENK) – The international medical charity, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is urgently calling for an improved medical and humanitarian response for people fleeing conflict in Sudan and entering South Sudan through Renk, a town located in the northernmost state of Upper Nile.

Since the fighting erupted in Sudan, around 290,000 individuals have reportedly entered South Sudan, 80% of them through Joda border in Upper Nile state.

Although the formal and informal transit centres in Renk are ideally a temporary stopover for them to move further into country, the returnees can spend weeks or even months there, according to a statement released by the medical charity.

This stay, it added, is often exhausting and painful, as they have limited access to food, shelter, water, sanitation and healthcare.

MSF said it is supporting Renk civil hospital in the measles isolation ward, an inpatient therapeutic feeding centre and a pediatric ward. In the wake of an influx of patients, the teams have expanded the ward capacity from 22-45 beds.

Since July, MSF has reportedly admitted 232 patients for malnutrition and treated 282 cases of measles requiring hospital care.

“Aid is woefully inadequate in Renk as compared to the needs that are growing every day. We are calling on the humanitarian and medical groups to do more by strengthening medical and humanitarian activities at the entry point and at transit centres. Basic healthcare services should be made available at all times on the border for those coming with medical conditions. A systematic vaccination catch-up should be also available 24/7 on the border given the current low vaccination coverage in Sudan and ongoing outbreak of measles in both countries,” says MSF head of mission in South Sudan, Jocelyn Yapi.

Many people, especially children, are arriving to the border in alarming health conditions suffering from deadly diseases like measles or malnutrition requiring immediate medical care, the charity noted.

Amidst the rainy season, MSF medical facilities in the area are recording a 70 per cent positivity rate of malaria, a disease that already kills more people than any other in South Sudan.

“Malnourished children in particular must be given urgent nutritional support on the border and at once transferred to the medical facilities,” stressed Yapi.

“Relief items such as mosquito nets, plastic sheets and other essential non-food items should be provided at the border so nobody who is in need is missed out,” she added

MSF teams are receiving severely sick patients at Bulukat transit centre, resulting in a higher mortality rate in the facilities in Malakal.

“The community of returnees is too vulnerable. Not only insufficient food and drinking water, they do not have shelters as they use pieces of cloth to protect themselves from the sun and rain. As we treat malnourished children in the hospital, we see that many mothers are also malnourished,” said Abraham Anhieny, MSF medical doctor in Renk.

Years of conflict have already caused one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises in South Sudan. As the country already suffers from regular disease outbreaks, flooding, displacements and high rates of malnutrition, the arrival of returnees is another burden, and the current response is incapable to absorb additional needs.

(ST)