The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) announced Tuesday that nearly one million children are malnourished in war-ravaged South Sudan.
"Those under severe acute malnutrition are 235,045 and under moderate acute malnutrition are 675,395," Josephine Ippe, UNICEF Global Nutrition Cluster Coordinator, told reporters in Juba.
"Northern Bahr el-Ghazal, Upper Nile and Jonglei [states] have the biggest case load of malnourished children," she added.
South Sudan has been shaken by violence since last December when President Salva Kiir accused sacked vice president Riek Machar of plotting to overthrow his regime.
Hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese have been displaced in subsequent fighting, while large swathes of the population continue to face an increasingly grave humanitarian crisis.
"Even before the crisis, we had a high rate of acute malnutrition, wasting levels among children in South Sudan," said the UNICEF official.
"Many of the States currently experiencing the conflict were already in a very vulnerable situation," she recalled.
According to a crisis report by UNICEF, some 50,000 children under the age of five who supper severe acute malnutrition could die unless they are treated.
"With other partners, we are planning to reach 420,000 children in moderate acute malnutrition stage and 176,283 in severe acute malnutrition by the end of the year," Ippe said.
"We need to act now if we are to prevent any further deterioration," she insisted.
The UNICEF official noted that of four million people in an emergency level of food insecurity, a bigger percentage is in the three troubled States.
"Fifty-seven percent of these are in Jonglei, Unity and Upper Nile," she said. "The actors have to come in fast before we reach famine."
By Okech Francis
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www.aa.com.tr/en
