Nyala, Feb23(Darfur24)The Ministry of Health in South Darfur State announced that it will begin next Sunday, in cooperation with Doctors Without Borders, a survey of mortality indicators for children and pregnant and lactating women.
Previous press reports spoke of the high death rates of children suffering from acute malnutrition, especially in the camps for the displaced around the city of Nyala and Layl, attributed to statements from residents of some camps without disclosure from the health authorities concerned with the matter.
Director of the Nutrition Department at the Ministry of Health, Howaida Abdullah, told (Darfur 24) that the survey that will be conducted aims to determine deaths in general as well as children under the age of five, in addition to the nutritional status of children and pregnant and breastfeeding women.
She added that the importance of the survey lies in the fact that the state, since the outbreak of the war in April, does not have any numbers that determine the nutritional status of children, pregnant and breastfeeding women, and that its results will be realistic and not doubtful, and the results will be analyzed immediately after completing the survey for the purpose of urgent interventions.
Regarding the daily deaths of children in the state due to acute malnutrition, Howaida said that her administration before the war, and in the last statistics for the month of March of the year 2023 AD, the number of children with acute malnutrition reached 7,779 boys and girls within the program receiving treatment, and this number is in some localities only, expected after the war, especially After homelessness, the economic deterioration of families, and the rise in prices, the numbers will be legendary.
Howaida revealed that since last October, there has been a lack of food and treatment for children in the state. It is expected that supplies will enter Nyala through UNICEF during the day or tomorrow. They will begin directly with the interventions because they started working from scratch.
While the Director of the General Department of Health Emergencies and Epidemic Control at the Ministry of Health, Hafez Muhammad Nour, said that the survey, which begins next Sunday and for a period of twelve days, targets more than one thousand and two hundred homes in Nyala North, Atash camp for the displaced, and the Nyala South locality, next to the Belil locality and Center Safar for the displaced and refugees from the southern country. Sudan.
Nour said that the results of the survey will answer the many questions raised, especially what is being circulated about the death of more than 250 children due to malnutrition, especially in the local camp at Lail, adding that they currently do not have information.