NEW YORK/PARIS, April 30, 2024 — As fighting escalates in North Darfur around El Fasher, Sudan, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is treating war-wounded people while simultaneously scaling up our response to a major malnutrition crisis in Zamzam camp, where the situation is becoming even more critical.
MSF calls on the warring parties to ensure the protection of civilians, health care structures, and staff so that vital assistance can be effectively provided for the tens of thousands of people whose lives are at risk before it is too late. MSF estimates that 370 trucks carrying 20 tons of food each will need to be delivered every month, and with the rainy season fast approaching and potentially impacting roads, action must be taken urgently.
30 percent of children acutely malnourished
In January, MSF conducted a rapid nutrition and mortality assessment of 400 households in Zamzam camp and found alarming numbers of children dying from malnutrition. We then carried out mass screenings of more than 46,000 children in March and April, and found that a staggering 30 percent were suffering from acute malnutrition, including 8 percent with severe cases.
Similar figures were found among the more than 16,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women who were screened: 33 percent were acutely malnourished, and 10 percent of them had severe acute malnutrition. These figures are double the emergency threshold of 15 percent, indicating that there is a massive, life-threatening emergency in Zamzam camp.
Despite urgent calls for support in February following the rapid assessment, MSF remains one of the only international aid agency responding to this enormous crisis—and, as a result, one of the very few able to respond to mass casualty events in El Fasher.
