Supplied/Save The Children.
Sudan is bracing for a rise in child malnutrition as the lean or pre-harvest season starts with the prospects for crop production looking bleak after more than three years of war with conflict ongoing, warned Save the Children.
Agriculture accounts for up to 80% of food and income in Sudan, but the conflict, combined with climate pressures, has decimated farming and further declines in cereal production are forecasted ahead of planting starting this month.
Already about 19 million people – or two in every five Sudanese – are facing acute food insecurity, according to the World Food Programme. The ongoing conflict has caused the world’s largest displacement crisis, forcing about 14 million peoplefrom their homes, reducing access to farmland, damaging infrastructure and irrigation systems and causing shortages of seeds, fertilizers, and equipment.
In the eastern state of Gedaref, once known as the breadbasket of Sudan, the impact is visible in overcrowded nutrition clinics treating growing numbers of malnourished children. Omer-, aged 12 months, is one of about 50 babies treated for severe acute malnutrition in the past month at a Save the Children nutrition clinic, where staff say numbers are rising and set to get worse.
Omer’s mother Reem-, 35, said her son had faced health issues since birth but his admission for severe acute malnutrition was due to the conflict, with less farming and more people to feed. Up to one million people arrived in Gedaref at its peak to escape violence in the capital Khartoum, adding a third to the population. The number of displaced people living there now is about 200,000.
” The war has made life harder for us all as there is less food due to less farming and more people,” said Reem, a mother of 10, who is feeding her son therapeutic milk every two hours.
Save the Children staff at the nutrition clinic said they treated more than 1,400 children for severe acute malnutrition last year, with 38 dying of hunger-related causes. So far this year they have treated about 200 children with 3 deaths, and they expect numbers to rise rapidly in the lean season before the harvest starts in October.
Meanwhile, the war has also crippled the health system, with 37% of health facilities across Sudan’s 18 states non-functional, according the World Health Organization, and aid cuts forcing the closure of health centres across the country. On top of this, the crisis in the Middle East has disrupted shipments of urgently needed medicines and therapeutic foods as well as leading to spike in prices for fuel and fertilizer needed in farming.
Save the Children’s Sudan Country Director, Mohamed Abdiladif said:
” The situation for children in Sudan is deteriorating even further as this conflict continues, with millions of children in the country impacted. What should be one of the country’s most productive agricultural regions is now struggling to feed its own people, with families pushed to the brink. Children are arriving at clinics dangerously malnourished, and without urgent support, many more will follow as the lean season sets in.
“The international community cannot look away. We urgently need increased funding and access to deliver life-saving nutrition and healthcare to children before this crisis spirals even further out of control.”
With only 22% of the $2.9b UN appeal for 2026 covered, Save the Children is urgently calling for increased funding to the humanitarian response in Sudan to continue providing vital services to the most vulnerable communities across the country.
Save the Children has worked in Sudan since 1983 and provides programming for children and families affected by conflict, displacement, extreme poverty and hunger.
