2023-08-18 12:52:43
« We are in a terrible situation. There is no food and we live under the trees says Nyakiire Nen, whose two-year-old daughter is receiving treatment for measles at the MSF hospital in Bentiu IDP camp, Unity state. ” To survive, we need three things: food, plastic sheeting to build a shelter, and medicine. »
Faced with the alarming influx of measles patients in Renk and Bentiu, MSF teams set up specialized isolation rooms, while in Aweil, Leer and Malakal, MSF structures increased their capacities in order to treat more patients. In Twic county, MSF helped open a 25-bed measles isolation center at Mayen Abun hospital, as well as train caregivers on the detection and management of measles. measles in eight primary care centers across the county.
In Upper Nile state, Renk is a border town with neighboring Sudan’s White Nile state where MSF has identified more than 1,300 suspected measles cases in the past month, and the entry point on more frequented by returnees fleeing the conflict. Since June 20, 2023, the isolation ward set up by MSF at Renk County Hospital has received 317 patients, 75% of them returnees. More than 80% of patients are children under four years old, and less than 15% of them were vaccinated once morest measles. Returnees live in overcrowded transit camps and travel in overloaded trucks or boats, accelerating the spread of the disease. In the Paloich returnee camp, where 3,000 people live, MSF launched an emergency intervention on 27 July focusing on access to healthcare and the treatment of malnutrition.
« My children were healthy when we were in Khartoum. But on the way, they began to have diarrhea and grew weak. In Malakal, we drank the almost red water of the river. On the boat trip from Malakal to Bentiu, the children started having symptoms of measles says Martha Nyariek, whose two children aged one and three are among the hundreds of patients treated by MSF medical teams in Unity state.
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