Bavita Nybvol waves her hand in front of her face. It’s 37C inside the cholera clinic. There is no air.
Beside her on the pallet bed, her 10-year-old daughter Aluth dozes uneasily. Like dozens of others in the South Sudanese health compound, she is sick with stomach cramps, diarrhea, vomiting.
In the next bed, 14-year-old Anyang Mark is listless. Her mother sits on the edge watching. The fear on her face is a stark reminder of how fragile life is.
Malek Miir Health Centre saw a surge of cholera patients in mid-February and, by the morning of March 12, had treated 178 patients. By evening, it was 180. Of those, 15 died — including a young child the day before I visited.
Cholera is rife. The shortage of any clean water here in Northern Bahr el Ghazal in South Sudan, which shares a border with Sudan, and the global shortage of vaccines has seen the bacterial disease spread like wildfire.
It’s just the latest crisis to hit Sudan, a country ravaged by a civil war that has claimed the lives of tens of thousands, forcing millions from their homes, with large parts of the region facing famine.
More than 1m people have crossed into neighbouring South Sudan since April 2023
However, officials on the ground have warned that worse is yet to come. The impact of US president Donald Trump’s executive order freezing humanitarian assistance will be “devastating”.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAid) administers civilian foreign aid and assists development in countries like South Sudan. In January, Mr Trump ordered virtually all foreign aid be frozen.
Canadian Foodgrains Bank executive director Andy Harrington warned: “We’re going to see many more deaths, tens of thousands of deaths probably, especially among women and children.”
End to programmes
Speaking at the airport in the capital, he said: “It’s quite devastating actually, we’ve been looking at childhood malnutrition programmes, at health clinics, [and] food assistance programmes that are just being stopped.
“So, for example, I was in the Aweil East refugee camp yesterday and we saw bags of USAid grain being distributed. We asked if there was any more, they said: ‘No, this is the last load.’”
He described this month as “very much at the stage of a car crash where someone has lost an arm or a leg”, meanwhile, “we’re trying to figure out how we can build a new system”.
Minister of state for international development Neale Richmond said aid reductions by large donors will “make the world less safe, secure and peaceful” now.
The decision to close USAid was the most significant, but we are also seeing other countries reducing their budgets at a time of unprecedented global need
Ireland’s development cooperation programme Irish Aid remains on track, he added. Irish Aid gives over €100m annually to Ireland’s main development and humanitarian NGOs.
Many projects I visited along the border between Sudan and South Sudan are staffed by Concern Worldwide or supported by Irish Aid. However, at the start of March, Concern announced job losses across 13 countries— including Sudan and South Sudan — blaming “aid funding cuts”.
The vast majority of those fleeing into South Sudan arrive with nothing. They care little about the politics of aid. They’re too busy trying to survive.
