The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has spent more than $21 million on their operations in South Sudan during the last three weeks owing to the “depth and breadth of the crisis” in the country.
ICRC President Peter Maurer disclosed in a press conference in Juba today that the Red Cross already spent more than 30% of their initial budget of 64 million Swiss francs ($70 million) for 2014 within the last few weeks alone.
Since the outbreak of violence in mid December the Red Cross has been providing medical supplies to health facilities and also has deployed surgeons and doctors to treat the sick, wounded, and malnourished at hospitals in Juba, Bentiu, and Malakal.
“We have spent already maybe more than 30% of what we had originally planned of 2014 in the last three weeks. Despite the fact that we have beefed up our operation what we have done so far is insufficient to cope with the profound and deep needs we are confronted with,” said the president.
Maurer said that the speed and scale of the violence caught ICRC by surprise leaving it difficult for their surgical teams to cope. He said they had treated already ‘many hundreds’ of wounded and helping in the humanitarian response to the approximately 200,000 people displaced.
“It’s for me unquestionable that we will… very soon have to go back to donors with supplementary requests, but we are working on the figures,” he said.
“I would like to use the opportunity of my passing here in Juba… to appeal and to sensitize the donor community that we are not out of the wood yet, and we will need more resources as we move forward in order to cope with the depth and breadth of the crisis at which we are looking.”