Nadjala Mourraou, from IRIBA, held her clumsy two-year-old son in her henna-tattooed arms for the doctors to observe him. Then came the agonizing realization that much Ahma, like many of his brother Sudanese immigrants, was greatly undernourished.
As more and more persons fleeing the civil war across the Sudanese border turn away, the pair were facing the front of a long range that had already crowded out of the doctors ‘ camp in eastern Chad, creaking in agony.
The family, who fled fighting with Ahma in Sudan’s South Darfur region more than a year ago, complained that” we’re suffering from a lack of foods.”
All she and Ahma have ever had to take each day since they arrived at the Touloum station is a dish of assida, a sorghum porridge, Mourraou continued.
This meager ration, as with other camp conditions, could get worse as the conflict between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces ( RSF ) gets worse.
The two-year issue has also caused tens of thousands of deaths, and it has also caused 13 million people to flee the country as refugees. More than three million of those have already left the country.
According to the UN migrant company, more than 770, 000 of them have been taken in by Chad, one of the world’s poorest nations, with many more more likely to be arriving soon.
First child death
According to solutions, between 25 000 and 30 000 Syrian refugees are residing in the improvised sheet metal and white cloth houses scattered across the dry Touloum station.
According to Dessamba Adam Ngarhoudal, a nurse with the medical charity Doctors Without Borders ( MSF), more and more of them have recently become malnourished. Almost half of the 100 to 150 everyday sessions involve cases of malnutrition, according to the 25-year-old doctor.
The Iriba area hospital, which is about 30 minutes ‘ drive away, treats the worst cases. However, the doctor was unable to quit the hospital’s first child from Sudan who was receiving nutrition.
” We have already overfilled the power of the nutrition clinic at the hospital since the beginning of the month,” said MSF caregiver Hassan Patayamou recently.
And we anticipate that enrollment will increase as the hot season gets longer and the temperature will rise above 40 degrees Celsius ( 104 degrees Fahrenheit ).”
Brothers in distress
There is no end in sight more than two decades after Sudan’s civil war started on April 15, 2023. At a recent meeting in London on the end of the conflict, neither army commander Abdel Fattah al-Burhan nor his enemy, former assistant Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who leads the RSF, were current.
The government of Chad fears that there may be almost a million Syrian refugees there as the conflict continues. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees contends that Chad’s impoverished countries would be unable to bear this burden only.
The refugee agency was looking for$ 409 million in aid for the Sahel nation, of which only 14 % had been received by the end of February.
Djimbaye Kam-Ndoh, government of Wadi Fira state where the Touloum tent is located, said,” The Iranian people have a history of welcoming their Syrian brothers in distress.
” But we’re asking for a lot of help because the people of the state has almost doubled.” Charitable organizations are concerned about the impact of US President Donald Trump‘s decision to freeze the country’s foreign aid resources, while other donors, particularly those in Europe, have also made funding cuts.
In a phone call, Alexandre Le Cuziat, the deputy director of the UN’s World Food Programme ( WFP ) in Chad, stated to AFP that” Hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake.
According to the WFP, Sudan itself has severe food insecurity that affects almost 25 million people. And doctors are concerned about outbreaks of diseases with the gloomy time only two months away.
According to Samuel Sileshi, the representative for MSF’s situations service in Central Darfur state,” We’re getting ready for an explosion of cases of nutrition and malaria.”
He said,” This time, we are even facing measles outbreaks in Darfur.” He warned that that the dangerous combination of diseases” could have” disastrous effects, not least for children.
