UN camp in South Sudan: 'There were far too many little bodies in that morgue'

The parents who sit nervously by the beds of their limp but shaking children do not want to speak about the sickness that has been filling wards and tiny body bags for months.

They have seen the 4x4s loaded with corpses that daily leave the hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) at the UN’s Bentiu camp in South Sudan’s Unity state, where more than 100,000 people seeking shelter from war are battling disease.

Related: South Sudan: women and girls raped as ‘wages’ for government-allied fighters^[1]

“The children [keep getting] sick here, time and again, one after the other, and we have to come back for more medicine,” says George, looking away from his two-year-old daughter, Nyankiem, whose frame is withered by successive bouts of malaria.

Nyankiem’s baggy-skinned feet will not stop jumping to a horrible beat, painfully out of rhythm with the sounds from a tinny radio. The melodies are occasionally disrupted by a chorus of weak wails that otherwise-silent parents rock and shush away.

Since George arrived in June, his life has consisted of watching children hooked up to the oxygen machines crowding hospital aisles.

He had to give up working for a charity when his wife gave birth and was unable to care for the five of their eight children who have malaria.

MSF has treated 38,000 children for malaria in Bentiu since June.

An industrial digger outside the UN’s gate clears a roadside swamp to bury dozens of bodies each week. But hundreds of people are still arriving daily, despite a peace deal in August ^[2] that failed to silence the guns in Unity.

As dusk settles over the camp, new arrivals – most of whom have not eaten during days of walking – are erecting tents out of sticks and cloth in preparation to queue overnight for registration the next day.

After a night of rain, hundreds of people squat in meandering, muddy lines for a card that entitles them to a meagre ration of grain.

On some of the worst days there were far too many little bodies in that morgue … upwards of eight or nine

Vanessa Cramond, MSF

“All the problems come from food. Two tinfuls is not enough for one person for a whole month,” says George, echoing the complaint of many.

His children used to play all day in their village in Koch county; now they lie down. Nyankiem got milk from the family’s cows; all of these have now been stolen. At home they had mosquito nets; they do not have them here.

Hunger, exhaustion and a lack of clean water in a densely packed swampland, where malarial mosquitoes multiply, has created “a perfect health storm”, says Vanessa Cramond, MSF’s medical coordinator in Bentiu, adding that deaths have slowed over the past fortnight, but the situation for children is still precarious. A makeshift morgue has been set up at the gates of the base.

“On some of the worst days there were far too many little bodies in that morgue … upwards of eight or nine,” she says.

A door-to-door campaign^[3] to check children under five for malaria has seen many gaining early access to treatment before their condition is allowed to deteriorate, but undernourishment still gnaws away at children’s health.

“If there was food and milk like at home, everything would be fine, as our children would be strong and their bodies could fight these sicknesses,” says George.

Eyewitnesses say that systematic executions, rape and abduction were followed by the raiding and razing of villages, cattle camps and crops.

“We want to go back to the village, but the situation there is still the same. The people are still dying,” says Nyawut, whose three children have malaria.

Despite seeing men and boys shot dead, and girls raped and abducted^[4], Nyawut used to leave the UN camp to collect firewood for cooking and selling to supplement the diet of her fading children. “But three days ago four people were killed near the gate, so I stopped,” she says.

Others disappear during collections often interrupted by gunfire, and the sound of screaming. Some describe being “hunted” by armed men for rape, but can’t just stay in the UN base and watch their children go hungry.

South Sudan has the biggest UN humanitarian aid appeal after Syria^[5], but “is right at the top of the list in terms of starving kids”, and has a high mortality rate, says Simon Mansfield, the head of the European Union’s humanitarian operation (Echo).

“On any indicator you choose, it’s probably the worst, and on top of that we have large areas of the country and large populations … in serious conditions but we don’t know because we haven’t been able to get in,” he says.

“When we were at home, we could give them everything they needed,” says George, stealing a glance at Nyankiem; his baby girl born with the war, and desperately trying to outlive it.

Hannah McNeish travelled to South Sudan^[6] with Echo

References

1. ^{^} South Sudan: women and girls raped as ‘wages’ for government-allied fighters (www.theguardian.com)
2. ^{^} a peace deal in August (www.theguardian.com)
3. ^{^} A door-to-door campaign (www.msf.org)
4. ^{^} girls raped and abducted (www.theguardian.com)
5. ^{^} South Sudan has the biggest UN humanitarian aid appeal after Syria (fts.unocha.org)
6. ^{^} South Sudan (www.theguardian.com)