The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Juba, South Sudan | Xinhua | The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Tuesday warned of severe malnutrition in South Sudan as a result of flooding caused by the impact of climate change.
Hamida Lasseko, UNICEF country representative for South Sudan said 1.4 million children are already suffering from malnutrition whereas 300,000 children are suffering from severe wasting this year alone.
Lasseko told journalists in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, that the children who are most vulnerable continue to face malnutrition, especially severe malnutrition due to climate change, COVID-19, and other factors.
“When it comes to wasting in history of South Sudan, the vulnerability is even deepening much more now and this is because of a number of reasons that we all know, it is not only the conflict but also the climatic crisis that we have but also of late we have been having COVID as well,” she said.
She said that the cost of treating malnutrition is expected to rise. “The ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) is also expected to rise by 16 percent in terms of price because of all the challenges that we have globally because of inflation and all the logistical challenges that we have been experiencing and even to produce the stocks because the requirement for RUTF has gone much higher in the rest of the world,” she said.
