Approximately 20 households from Blue Nile state have recently reached the Doro refugee camp in Maban County, Upper Nile State in South Sudan, but have not been registered.

In an interview with Radio Tamazuj, El Samawi Adlan, a food security officer for the refugee camps in eastern South Sudan stated that the Blue Nile refugees at Doro are suffering from a lack of food and medicine.

Adlan noted that the people in the areas of Yabus, Maguf and Wadaka in the Blue Nile State are suffering from a shortage of sorghum and health care services which forced many of them to leave their homes and farms. Malnutrition is rampant among children and women in those three areas, he explained, referring to territories controlled by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North.

“The people there face huge challenges in terms of treatment, for instance when they go to the hospitals, medicines for malaria, diarrhoea and skin diseases are not available at all,” he explained.

The households that arrived at the Doro refugee camp fled their home areas in about June or August but have apparently not been registered officially by UNHCR. “The newcomers in Doro camp have not been registered by the organisation – they don’t receive food like their fellow refugees, and they only depend on their relatives,” Adlan stated.

Adlan appealed to the UNHCR to register the refugees in order to avert a food crisis. He also called on the other humanitarian organisations to save the lives of people suffering in Blue Nile State by providing essential services.

File photo by P. Rulashe /UNHCR (Registration of refugees in Maban County) 

Related:

6,000 pupils without schooling in Doro camp, South Sudan (22 September 2013)

Blue Nile refugees at Doro camp boycott UNHCR meetings (1 September 2013)