At least 382 children have been affected by malnutrition over the last month in Panyijar County, Unity state, according to a clinical officer working in the area. The county earlier this year saw an influx of displaced people after fighting to the north.

Speaking to Radio on Tuesday, Medair Clinical Officer Peter Manyang said that the organization’s targeted supplementary feeding programme has treated 382 children in a period of less than a month.

“We have 382 children in the programme since date 24 April 2014, and we have 17 children admitted since that time in the stabilization centre,” said Manyang.

The medical worker explained that the admitted children are malnourished because they did not eat enough nutritious food. Also he pointed out that some of them have lost their mothers during the war.  

He explained that the children are fed in stages, in the first of which the children are fed with milk for two to three days. After that their appetite improves and they are promoted to the next stage until they are able to eat normal food and released in the last stage.

Medair opened its nutrition stabilization center in Ganyiel town on 13 March. The organization’s Emergency Response Project Manager, Heidi Giesbrecht, explained that Medair was asked by another organization, IRC, to set up two health programmes in the county.

The first is the stabilization center, which treats children with severe malnutrition, and the second is the feeding program, which treats those moderately malnourished.

“Seeing all of the malnourished children here and knowing that there is such a shortage of food is heartbreaking, however it is encouraging to know that what Medair is doing here is making a real difference for these malnourished kids,” she said from Ganyiel.  

Meanwhile, medical workers confirmed there are no cholera cases in Ganyiel.

File photo: An IRC health worker measures a child’s upper arm to determine whether she suffers from malnutrition (Peter Biro/IRC

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CORRECTION: This article initially stated that the number of affected children was 982 when in fact the medical officer had said 382.