There is no more time to waste to avoid thousands of preventable deaths. Among the more than 29,000 children under five years old screened last week during a vaccination campaign in Zamzam camp, 10 per cent suffer from severe acute malnutrition, a life-threatening condition, while 34 per cent suffer from global acute malnutrition, which will evolve into severe acute malnutrition if not treated effectively and timely.
“The malnutrition rates found during the screening are massive and likely some of the worst in the world currently,” says Claudine Mayer, MSF medical referent. “It’s even more terrifying as we know from experience the results are often underestimated in the area when we use only the mid-upper arm circumference criteria, like we did here, instead of combining it with measuring [children’s] weight and height.”
A mass screening we carried out in March 2024 revealed an 8 per cent severe acute malnutrition rate and a 29 per cent global acute malnutrition rate, which was already double the alert threshold of the World Health Organization, 15 per cent.
The only food available is from pre-existing stocks, which is not sufficient for the people living in the area. Additionally, food prices are at least three times higher in El Fasher compared to the rest of Darfur region. Fuel prices are soaring as well, making it difficult to pump water and run clinics that rely on generators for electricity. Our staff on site report that many people only expect to eat one meal a day.
“In such a dire situation, we should be scaling up our response,” says Mayer. “Instead, running critically low on supplies, we are reaching a breaking point and were recently forced to reduce our activity to focus solely on children in the most severe condition.”
Fonte original msf.org
