As the exodus from Mosul continues, camps for displaced persons are filling up. Among the population who fled the neighborhoods of west Mosul, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams are seeing new patients—children, mostly babies—suffering from malnutrition.

At the beginning of March, MSF conducted a rapid screening for malnutrition in the Hammam al-Alil camp, which hosts 28,000 displaced people 30 kilometers south of Mosul. Of the 486 children screened, 1.2 percent suffered from severe acute malnutrition and 2.2 percent from moderate acute malnutrition. Similar numbers were recorded in the camp in Qayyarah, 30 kilometers further south.

To treat these children, and in anticipation of more cases of malnutrition, MSF is establishing an intensive nutrition center in the Qayyarah hospital.