MSF warns of looming humanitarian disaster in Upper Nile state
April 28, 2015 (NAIROBI) – Doctors Without Borders or Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has warned continued clashes in Upper Nile State are likely to raise more deaths and displacement in the area. The humanitarian medical organization says a huge number of civilians are displaced with living conditions worrisome.
The humanitarian aid agency urged South Sudanese authorities from both sides to allow free access to humanitarian assistant to the affected communities before the rainy season.
“The rainy season is just setting in and with the congestion in the PoC, we have started to see open defecation, long queues at water points due to low water quantity and pressure. Cases of acute diarrhoea are increasing so we are reinforcing our surveillance measures to ensure that outbreaks are prevented,” the agency stated in a press statement seen by Sudan Tribune.
The recent conflicts in the town of Malakal have swollen the number of civilians under protection to 26,500 people, forcing different families to share same tents and sleep on the floor.
The doctors without border said they were continuing to save lives of people by providing medical services at the hospital in the UN base, adding aids agencies in the site have stepped in to ensure sufficient water supply to them.
MSF South Sudan head of mission, Juan Prieto, in a statement said that the organisation had launched a cholera intervention last year to limit its spread but said he feared the situation would further deteriorate.
“We are afraid that if fighting continues, there will be more displacement, further congestion in the PoC and a deterioration of health and general living conditions,” he said.
In Melut, the over 1,665 families that have fled to the west side of the Nile are mostly members of the Shilluk ethnic group who were previously displaced and living in a camp. Most of them have fled to the Noon area, about 10 km across the Nile.
These families are living under trees, with extremely limited access to latrines, leading to open defecation and have to travel long distances to fetch water from the Nile. Unless the water is treated, it is not fit for drinking.
Other families are scattered all over the west bank of the Nile in Kaka, Kuju and Toruguang Payams, some 80 km away from Melut.
Prieto added that the families had no shelter either, and their food resources are slowly getting exhausted as they consumed what they managed to salvage when they moved at the beginning of the month.
“The biggest problem is water. I have to go to the Nile three to four times a day. It is a 25-minute walk each way,” said a 17-year-old Teresa, a Shilluk who recently fled to Noon. “We are worried for our lives and for the future, if we survive.”
MSF is supplying each family with water treatment kits in order for them to have clean water, as well as using speed boats and donkeys to transport and distribute food and non-food items to families scattered in different parts of Noon.
The organisation said it’s regularly conducting mobile clinics with outpatient and emergency room services for the population in Noon, and referring acute medical cases to health facilities in the towns of Melut and Kodok.
In a day, MSF treats an average of 150 patients for diseases like measles, acute watery diarrhoea, and respiratory tract infections in Melut town. However, due to continued fighting in the area, MSF said it was sometimes forced to suspend its activities, as a preventive measure, leaving the population in an even worse position.
“The people here have been on the move since the war started, they have nowhere to call home any more as insecurity has made them nomads, moving from one place to another in search of safe havens to stay. Whenever clashes start, they are prompted to move. Children under the age of five years and pregnant women are especially vulnerable during these times,” said Joao Martins, MSF project coordinator in Melut.
The security situation in Upper Nile, and in other states severely affected by the conflict, remains unstable. Mistrust between communities leads to clashes which, in turn, have massive humanitarian consequences. People are constantly on the run and yet the areas to which they flee do not offer favourable living conditions.
As many more people get displaced, some to remote areas where they have hardly anything to live on, MSF in a press statement calls upon all armed groups to facilitate the free movement of humanitarian assistance and personnel to all parts affected by the South Sudanese conflict.
“Only in this way can lives be saved,” it says.
(ST)