South Sudan 2012 © John Stanmyer/VII

An aerial views of the Yida camps, where some 60,000 Sudanese refugees are seeking sanctuary just 12 miles inside the borders of South Sudan, and where mortality rates for children and adults alike are well above emergency thresholds. #

South Sudan 2012 © John Stanmyer/VII

On the ground, thousands of refugees are seeking medical assistance, like these mothers who came to an Ambulatory Therapeutic Feeding Center (ATFC) run by MSF in Yida to get care for their malnourished children. #

South Sudan 2012 © John Stanmyer/VII

Children play in dirty water at the Yida refugee camp, which, in the rainy season, has become even more unwelcoming for new arrivals and exceedingly difficult to resupply by road or air. Additionally, an insufficient number of toilets, a lack of proper sanitation, and a limited amount of safe water are enabling the spread of potentially fatal diseases. #

South Sudan 2012 © John Stanmyer/VII

Women fill plastic jugs at the MSF water point in Yida, solving, for the moment at least, one of the most difficult challenges they, and aid groups working in Yida, face: providing safe water to a highly vulnerable population. #

South Sudan 2012 © John Stanmyer/VII

(This photo and next) MSF staff measure children’s height and weight in order to determine if they are malnourished, a condition found in many of the children arriving in Yida, as well as many of the children among the nearly 120,000 refugees who fled Sudan’s Blue Nile State over the past year and are seeking sanctuary in a collection of camps in South Sudan’s Upper Nile State. #

South Sudan 2012 © John Stanmyer/VII

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South Sudan 2012 © John Stanmyer/VII

An MSF doctor admits a child to MSF’s hospital in Yida. MSF has been working in Yida since refugees began arriving, and MSF epidemiological teams have gathered data showing that in June, 82 percent of the families in the camp had a family member who had fallen ill—and that at least five children under the age of five died each day, mostly from diarrhea and severe infections. #

South Sudan 2012 © John Stanmyer/VII

A two-year-old who had become extremely malnourished due to severe diarrhea is fed through a tube at MSF’s hospital in Yida. MSF is the primary medical provider in Yida (as well as in the camps in Upper Nile State). The organization has doubled the number of beds it has available in Yida to treat increasing numbers of seriously ill patients, and additional staff are also being sent to the area.#

South Sudan 2012 © John Stanmyer/VII

Sadly, not everyone gets the treatment they need in time. Here, relatives of Hassan Kako, a 13-year-old boy who died of acute malaria, carry his body to Yida’s expanding graveyard. The living conditions in the camp and the ongoing rainy season, which is forecast to continue for at least several more weeks, have triggered a precipitous rise in the number of malaria cases. #

South Sudan 2012 © John Stanmyer/VII

After they bury Hassan, family members pray over his grave. #

South Sudan 2012 © John Stanmyer/VII

For the tens of thousands of refugees in Yida, the immediate future is shrouded in uncertainty, something to endure rather than something to look forward to. Assistance of all kinds must be scaled-up rapidly, both in Yida and in the camps of Upper Nile State, to the east. “While MSF can continue providing treatment, a huge increase of aid is needed to avoid much more illness and death, especially of children,” Bart Janssens, MSF operations director, said earlier this month. “The situation requires all organizations to work in full emergency mode right now.” #

South Sudan 2012 © John Stanmyer/VII

For the moment, however, these women and many others in Yida must continue to battle through the conditions and their own weakened State to perform basic tasks, like gathering water, that can help them stave off the disease and misery that have taken root in the camps alongside them. #