South Sudan refugee health situation 'alarming,' U.N. warns

"The situation of 170,000 Sudanese refugees living in camps and settlements across South Sudan's Unity and Upper Nile states is alarming and there are worries about an outbreak of cholera, U.N. refugee agency officials said on Friday," the Associated Press/Washington Post reports (8/24). "'With the current rain and cold, we are seeing refugees suffering from respiratory tract infections, diarrhea and malaria,' a spokesperson for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Adrian Edwards, told reporters in Geneva," the U.N. News Centre writes (8/24). "Most of the refugees are young children -- accompanied by mothers who are also sick -- with almost half in the Upper Nile state under the age of 11, said UNCHCR," Agence France-Presse notes (8/25). The New York Times' "Lens" blog profiles the Intensive Therapeutic Feeding Center in South Sudan's Batil refugee camp, where "[a]s many as four young children die ... every day, according to Doctors Without Borders" (Sobecki, 8/24). In related news, IRIN examines an "urgent need for mental healthcare" in the country, where "decades of civil war have resulted in widespread trauma, and the chronically underdeveloped nation is struggling to provide facilities, staff and treatment for those in need" (8/27).