Aid agencies in South Sudan yesterday released an updated 2014 South Sudan Crisis Response Plan, which they say will cost US $1.8 billion to implement.

In the wake of a high-level donor conference held in Oslo, Norway, last month, the aid groups and United Nations agencies say they have already raised $750 million, more than 40% of the plan’s budget.

According to a press statement by UNOCHA, the United Nations’ coordination office in South Sudan, the new plan will assist 3.8 million people hit by hunger, violence and disease by the end of the year.

“Six months into the conflict, around 1.5 million people have been uprooted from their homes and over seven million people are at risk of hunger and disease. Unless fighting ends and people can return to their homes and resume their livelihoods, the situation will continue to worsen,” reads the statement.   

Toby Lanzer, the Humanitarian Coordinator in South Sudan said, “Now that the rains have set in, conditions in South Sudan are deteriorating by the day: people are literally living in mud. Cholera has broken out, malaria is rampant and many children are malnourished.”

He explained that aid agencies would respond by setting up emergency healthcare services, and by providing food, clean water, proper sanitation and shelter.

“We have three main goals: to save lives, prevent a famine, and avert the loss of a generation of children and young people to this conflict,” he added.

Costs of the humanitarian operations in South Sudan have been dramatically increased by access limitations and logistical complications caused by fighting.

Heavy rains normally make roads impassible in South Sudan through part of the year, and aid supplies must be pre-positioned in vulnerable areas during the dry season. This was not possible this year in some areas because of ongoing fighting.

Photo: A nutritionist working for the aid agency Medair with a mother feeding a malnourished child in Ganyliel, Unity State (Medair/Wendy van Amerongen)