LIBREVILLE: Doctors Without Borders (MSF), a French non-governmental organization on Friday warned that thousands of children whose families fled the war-hit Sudan for neighboring Chad are suffering from malnutrition.
The NGO also appealed for emergency food assistance to cope with the serious matter.
Chad is currently hosting the highest number of refugees from Sudan, where war started in April between the army and paramilitaries.
According to the United Nations refugee agency more than 8,000 people fled to Chad from Sudan in the first week of November alone.
Chad already hosts about 900,000
Chad already hosts about 900,000 refugees and after the surge in fighting in Sudan’s western Darfur region the influx has picked up.
Doctors Without Borders in a statement said that in the Metche camp, which is sheltering 40,000 people, the prevalence of global acute malnutrition is 13.6 percent in the children under five years of age.
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The MSF said since the start of the war, its teams have helped around 14,000 malnourished children, nearly 3,000 of whom had to be moved to hospitals in critical condition.
According to an estimate by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project, more than 10,400 people have been killed in the Sudan conflict so far.
According to UN figures the conflict has displaced more than 4.8 million people in Sudan while a further 1.2 million have escaped into neighboring countries.
