Doctors Without Borders Forced to Suspend Aid in Sudanese Camp with Thousands of Malnourished Children

nairobi - Doctors Without Borders has been forced to stop providing aid in the Zamzam refugee camp in the Darfur region of Sudan, leaving five thousand malnourished children without assistance.

"A decision to suspend our work somewhere involuntarily is not taken lightly," assures Karel Hendriks, director of Doctors Without Borders Netherlands. "But if we can no longer provide assistance because warring parties are blocking aid supplies, then this is the inevitable consequence."

The decision may be considered unusual for Doctors Without Borders, which usually remains as the last and only aid organization in conflict zones. The conflict in the area involves, among others, the government army Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). This conflict has been ongoing for seventeen months and has claimed at least 20,000 lives. "There is an urgent need for aid supplies," says Michel-Olivier Lacharité, head of emergency response at Doctors Without Borders. Hendriks expresses his outrage. "We call on the warring parties to immediately allow more aid supplies so that we can provide assistance on the necessary scale."

The forced suspension of aid hits particularly hard in the Zamzam camp, where 450,000 refugees reside, and where an official famine was declared a few months ago. Doctors Without Borders had already observed that thirty percent of the children in Zamzam are malnourished, and that one child dies every two hours due to food shortages.

Lacharité mentions a glimmer of hope. A few trucks carrying supplies arrived in the past days. "But this is far from enough," he says. "For Zamzam, we need at least a hundred trucks per month." Doctors Without Borders stated that they can still provide aid in other locations in Sudan.