Dr Emmanuel Berbain
My name is Emmanuel. I’m a doctor working with Médecins Sans Frontières and I’m just back from eastern Chad.
500,000 people
have fled the war in Sudan
and taken refuge in eastern Chad
The displaced people who left Sudan as a matter of urgency have settled in camps, mainly Adré camp, one of the largest in the area.
The people who left their homes are destitute and depend almost entirely on food distributions.
The food distributions organised
by the World Food Programme
could stop due to a lack of funding
There is clearly a need for a wake-up call to raise international awareness of this tragedy.
Awat’s story shows some of the issues around the humanitarian response. Awat is three years old. She left Darfur with her mother, aunt and siblings three months ago. They left urgently, Awat was in good health in Darfur but, when she arrived at the camp, her health deteriorated fast.
Her mother described a situation of “famine” in their household. Also she didn’t have enough drinking water for her children.
She had no ration card and therefore had no access to food distributions.
After a few weeks, Awat fell ill, developing diarrhoea, anorexia and oedema in the feet, a sign of severe acute malnutrition.
When MSF teams saw her, she was in a very critical state.
At that point, Awat weighed just 7 kg – the weight of an eight-month-old baby. Awat is three years old. She had widespread swelling and her skin was extremely damaged – she had barely a few centimetres of healthy skin on her body.
The team did their utmost in terms of prevention, treatment of infections, skin care and pain management. She had blood transfusions. Unfortunately, her prognosis was extremely poor.
After three weeks in an extremely weakened state, she died.
Awat is one of more than 3,000 children who have been cared for in MSF paediatric hospitals since the start of the year. Fortunately, most patients recovered.
This story says a lot about the causes of food insecurity and the need to scale up the aid response.
As a humanitarian and medical organisation, we are doing everything we can to improve care at the hospital level.
The other part is how to bolster food aid provided to these families – especially to households like Awat’s.
It is true that we are in a period where people’s needs are enormous but there are insufficient resources available – and the situation in eastern Chad
By its own admission, the World Food Programme has a shortfall of 200 million of the 260 million needed for the coming months. Currently it can’t say if food distributions can be ensured after December. These families – this population – must not be abandoned. Substantial funds must be allocated to prevent a tragic situation like Awat’s from happening again.