JUBA - At 14 months, Adut Duor should be walking. Instead, his spine juts through his skin and his legs dangle like sticks from his mother’s lap in a South Sudan hospital.
At half the size of a healthy baby his age, he is unable to walk. Adut’s mother, Ayan, couldn’t breastfeed her fifth child, a struggle shared by the 1.1 million pregnant and lactating women who are malnourished in the east African country. “If I had a blessed life and money to feed him, he would get better,” Ayan said at a state hospital in Bor, 200 kilometres (124 miles) from the capital, Juba. A recent UN-backed report projects that about 2.3 million children under five in South Sudan now require treatment for acute malnutrition, with over 700,000 of those in severe condition. The report attributes the rising numbers to renewed conflict in the northern counties and reduced humanitarian assistance. Independent since 2011, South Sudan has been crippled by violence and poor governance. United Nations investigators recently accused authorities of looting billions of dollars in public funds, as nine million of South Sudan’s almost 12 million people rely on humanitarian assistance. Now, funding cuts, renewed violence, climate change and entrenched corruption are converging to deepen the unfolding hunger crisis. (Jamaica Gleaner)
