South Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia face an imminent “health catastrophe”, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said Friday, citing a cholera epidemic and cases of severe acute malnutrition. South Sudan, the world’s youngest country after gaining independence from Sudan in 2011, was plunged into a violent civil war between 2013 and 2018 that claimed around 400,000 lives.A power-sharing agreement between the warring parties provided a fragile calm, but it has all but collapsed as violent clashes have broken out between forces allied to President Salva Kiir and his long-time rival, First Vice President Riek Machar, who was put under house arrest in March. According to MSF, 35,000 to 85,000 South Sudanese refugees have fled to Mattar, an Ethiopian town near the border with South Sudan. “The local infrastructure is stretched beyond capacity,” the NGO said in a statement, adding that “with the resurgence of waterborne diseases such as cholera and acute watery diarrhoea, the risk of a health disaster is imminent.” MSF said it had treated around 1,200 patients with cholera, a disease that can be fatal in 10-20 percent of cases. “Over 40 per cent of malaria rapid diagnostic tests have returned positive, and nearly 7 percent of children under five show signs of severe acute malnutrition,” MSF added. The NGO also announced that it had moved its medical services from the Ethiopian border town of Burbeiye to the more distant Mattar due to armed clashes between “the South Sudanese army and an opposition group” along the border. It has received more than 200 people with “war injuries” in Burbeiye since the fighting began in February, it said. MSF urged the various parties to the conflict in South Sudan to “ensure a safe humanitarian space and protect civilians and aid workers alike,” and called on international donors to scale up assistance particularly in Mattar “where shelter, water and medical care are in too low supply for people who have fled horrific violence”.
