An Escalating Health Crisis in South Sudan

Sudanese refugees fleeing violence in their towns and villages continue to arrive in South Sudan only to be faced with a different kind of disaster in overcrowded refugee camps.

Since November 2011, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has been operating emergency programs in South Sudan for tens of thousands of refugees who fled violence in Sudan's South Kordofan and Blue Nile States. MSF has field hospitals in five refugee camps in Unity and Upper Nile states in South Sudan (Batil, Doro, Jamam, Yida, and Gendrassa). However, resources in the camps are stretched extremely thin, and the humanitarian crisis is only worsening as more refugees arrive. Heavy rains have exacerbated the situation, flooding camps and leaving refugees—many of whom have already endured the journey from Sudan on foot—vulnerable to diseases like diarrhea, malaria, and cholera.

All photographs South Sudan 2012 © Nichole Sobecki