At least five children and three adults with cholera died as they went in search of treatment in South Sudan after aid cuts by the Trump administration shuttered local health clinics during the country’s worst cholera outbreak in decades, the international charity Save the Children reported this week.
The victims, all from the country’s east, died on a grueling three-hour walk in scorching heat as they tried to reach the nearest remaining health facility, the agency said in a statement.
The American aid cuts, put into effect by the Trump administration in January, forced 7 of 27 health facilities supported by Save the Children across Akobo County to close and 20 others to partly cease operations, the charity said in a statement. Some clinics are now run only by volunteers, and they no longer have the means to transport sick patients to hospitals.
In an interview on Thursday, Christopher Nyamandi, Save the Children’s country director for South Sudan, said he had visited a health clinic in Akobo County that was providing nutrition assistance and helping with the cholera response shortly after the cuts were announced. The scene he described was dire.
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Tents that were supposed to hold 25 people were crammed with hundreds, he said. People were sleeping outside, facing exposure to mosquitoes and withering heat while they tried recovering from cholera.
Mr. Nyamandi said health care workers on the scene described “how difficult it is to manage the situation where people are just out there. And when somebody dies,” he added, the workers can only “try to protect the children from seeing that scene.”
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