'Tip of the iceberg': 70,000 children to face acute malnourishment this year, says UN

Sudan’s prolonged war can risk leaving over 70,000 children severely malnourished in 2024, the United Nations on Friday said adding that tens of thousands of children can die if aid is not increased.

UN’s children agency UNICEF has urged the world not to turn a blind eye to the predicament of people in Sudan that has been triggered by a 10-month-long civil war.

“The consequences of the past 300 days means that more than 700,000 children are likely to suffer from the deadliest form of malnutrition this year,” spokesman James Elder told reporters in Geneva.

“We won’t be able to treat more than 300,000 of them without improved access and additional support,” said Elder, just back from a trip to Sudan.

The North African country has been in a war since April last year when Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, his former deputy and commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces sparked a conflict, resulting in the death of thousands of people.

Out of this estimate, about 10,000 to 15,000 people have been killed in a single city in the western Darfur region.

UN estimates suggest that more than half the population in Sudan requires aid. The war has also triggered a humanitarian crisis in the country with nearly 18 million left to face acute food shortages.

More trouble in Sudan’s way?

The recent revelations by the UN shed light on the dilapidated socioeconomic conditions in Sudan.

Soaring malnutrition, coupled with the rampant spread of diseases like cholera, measles and malaria, means children are already dying.

Findings by a charity called Doctors Without Borders say that at least one child dies every two hours in Sudan’s Zamzam camp for displaced people in Darfur.

The war has triggered one of the world’s largest displacement crises. Nearly eight million people have fled their homes, half of them children.

“That’s 13,000 children every single day for 300 days,” Elder pointed out.

He said there had also been a “500-percent increase” in just one year in murders, sexual violence and recruitment of children to fight.

“That equates to terrifying numbers of children killed, raped or recruited. And these numbers are the tip of the iceberg,” Elder said, reiterating the urgent need for a ceasefire, and for more aid.

With inputs from AFP