The poor people of Africa. Yes, Africa is a continent so often besieged with one "problem" or the other - famine and wars to name but two - but again, today, with the world concentrating on a multitude of issues in the Middle East and the Ukraine (and that's only two of them), the world has seemingly ignored the people of South Sudan who are confronted with a really dire humanitarian crisis.
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The United Nations says the deepening humanitarian emergency in South Sudan is the "worst in the world" and warns 50,000 children could die this year unless the aid effort is scaled up. But it’s largely a forgotten crisis, overshadowed by strife in other parts of the world including Gaza, Iraq, Syria and Ukraine. Aid agencies say they've found it difficult to raise money to fund operations in South Sudan, despite a growing threat of famine.Caitlin Brady, an aid worker with Save the Children in South Sudan, said about 4 million people in the country are "very, very” hungry – more than 2 million of them children.****
"In 2010 aid officials declared Akobo the "hungriest place on earth" following two years of drought. Now the district is famished again thanks to war.
The conflict, which has taken at least 10,000 lives, is focused in three states of South Sudan and aid officials estimate about a third of the population faces "dangerous levels of food insecurity".
Cholera has broken out. There have been 5300 cases so far, including 115 deaths, meaning the cholera fatality rate in South Sudan is now well above what health experts deem to be an "emergency threshold".
The aid effort has been hampered by deadly attacks on humanitarian workers. Last week six unarmed aid workers were killed in the northern region of Maban where more than 100,000 refugees are sheltering. US Secretary of State John Kerry said the killings were "simply appalling" and called on all parties to refrain from intimidating humanitarian workers. But the killings will "adversely and dramatically impact humanitarian operations" in the region, aid officials said.
Tens of thousands of civilians are sheltering at UN bases in South Sudan because they fear violence. Aid workers say conditions for 40,000 people at the UN camp in the northern town of Bentiu are "horrific" because the site has been inundated with sewage-contaminated floodwater."
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