In April, more than one year into the conflict in South Sudan, Action Against Hunger’s emergency team was sent to work with the communities in Jonglei, one of the states most affected by the fighting. After an inter-agency rapid needs assessment, the UN OCHA-led operation working group, along with the rapid response task force of the nutrition cluster and nutrition implementing partners, decided to send our team to the remote town of Old Fangak, Fangak County. After people had fled to the region after an escalation of conflict in New Fangak and Malakal, Action Against Hunger went to support a South Sudanese NGO, Hold the Child, with the scale-up of emergency nutrition services.

Once in Old Fangak, we met with local stakeholders, assessed access, and conducted screenings in fourteen villages around Old Fangak town, starting with the most remote and difficult to reach. In those areas—Chotbora, Mulkic, Galam, Wangchot, Tegauth and Wangmok—we found that among the 681 children under five screened, 15.7% were affected by acute malnutrition or wasting, clearly calling for the need to scale up nutrition treatment as well as interventions addressing to underlying causes of malnutrition, such as hygiene practices.

Therefore, with funds from OFDA, we launched a multi-sector emergency operation to ensure the most vulnerable populations were being reached and the geographical scope of Hold the Child’s ongoing nutrition activities would be expanded to the villages identified as having the highest need.

To date, we have established three outpatient therapeutic programs and treated hundreds of children for malnutrition. We also provided individual counseling sessions to over 500 pregnant or nursing women and caregivers of children from six months to two years old.  

In June, we conducted additional rapid assessments in Toch, an area southwest of Old Fangak without any nutrition programs; Hold the Child will set up an outpatient therapeutic program with technical support from our team.

More recently, a similar situation started to arise in another part of Fangak County, Keew Payam. Our emergency team was split into two teams, and since the beginning of August, one team has operated in Keew Payam to address the high number of acute malnutrition cases in partnership with the health organization Christian Mission Aid (CMA). We plan to assist displaced people who are arriving from Unity state—in July alone, we screened over 585 children under five, 124 of whom were malnourished, in Keew. We will provide mothers with clean delivery kits, soap, and mosquito nets. We’ll also build resilience by providing seeds, hand tools, and fishing kits.