Port Sudan, Sudan – After a two-and-a-half-hour journey from the village of al-Lalouba, Layla Ali arrived in Port Sudan to get help for her five-year-old son, Adam. His severe malnutrition had left his ribs visibly protruding beneath his skin. He had begun to lose his appetite two weeks earlier and became too sick to move.
The distance to the hospital and Ali’s fears about the cost of treatment stopped her from rushing Adam for medical treatment. But when his condition deteriorated further, Ali had no choice but to rush him to hospital. He suffers from recurring bouts of malnutrition, but this time we brought him to hospital because I was afraid he might die,” Ali told Al Jazeera.
I used to give him the usual meals we prepared at home, mostly porridge and milk. But the doctors have now helped me understand which foods are appropriate for his age and the nutrients he needs.” Adam’s condition reflects a wider crisis facing children across Sudan, where a civil war has continued since April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) estimates that 825,000 children under five will suffer from severe acute malnutrition in 2026, a 7 percent increase from 2025.
In the first six months of this year, UNICEF and its partners treated 174,700 children with severe acute malnutrition nationwide. The Port Sudan Teaching Hospital has recorded 433 cases between January and August this year. Maryam Gadalsid, a nutrition counsellor at the hospital, said the number of children admitted with malnutrition continues to rise, forcing medical staff to accommodate as many as possible.
But this has led to overcrowding, with three children to a single bed in the hospital’s 17-bed malnutrition unit, Gadalsid told Al Jazeera, increasing the risk of disease spreading among patients. An increase in the numbers of flies, which can contaminate food and water, and mosquitoes, which transmit malaria, was worrying, she said. Malnourished children, in particular, are at risk of these diseases and viruses.
The situation is particularly bad in western Sudan’s Darfur region, which had already faced two decades of war before the 2023 nationwide conflict broke out. Darfur has been an epicentre of the current conflict and is currently an RSF stronghold. Fighting there, combined with hunger and disease, has created an increasingly desperate situation for millions of civilians, particularly women and children.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
