South Sudanese fleeing war in Sudan have resorted to selling personal items to survive amid the soaring humanitarian crisis in Upper Nile, a humanitarian organization said.
Since the fighting erupted in Sudan in April, around 290,000 people have crossed over to South Sudan—80 per cent of them through the Joda border in Upper Nile State, the MSF said.
Some of these people receive a one-off cash distribution of $12 per person (approximately SSP12,000).
However, due to the high inflation in the country that resulted in high food prices—a normal meal on average is sold for $2 in Renk, approximately SSP2,000.
The MSF says, cash assistance is hardly enough to afford one meal a day for a week for most of the families here.
“I am selling my clothes for SSP 2,000 ($2) per piece to buy food. I have sold six of them and left with the remaining two to wear,” Marta Manher, a mother of six, living at Zero, one of the unofficial settlements for returnees in Renk was quoted by SMF in a press release extended to The City Review.
The situation is made worse by the lack of an adequate diet.
“Malnourished children in particular must be given urgent nutritional support on the border and at once transferred to the medical facilities,” Yapi said.
Limited food and deplorable living conditions are taking a toll on people’s health status. In two mobile clinic sites run by MSF at Zero and Abukadra, the teams are recording 300 medical consultations a day and seven out of 10 are malaria patients.
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