By Kei Emmanuel Duku<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A recent report by the GCFR on South Sudan’s food security has revealed a staggering estimate of 2.1 million children aged 6 to 59 months suffering from malnutrition between July 2024 and June 2025.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The report projects that from April to June 2025, five additional areas are expected to reach Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Acute Malnutrition Phase 3 and above.<\/p>\n This phase signifies a critical situation where access to food is severely limited due to factors beyond just war or inadequate food stocks.<\/p>\n Alarmingly, Baliet County in Upper Nile State has been classified in the extremely critical IPC Acute Malnutrition Phase 5, the highest level of acute malnutrition.<\/p>\n The report highlights a dire national statistic: only 2% of children aged 6-23 months receive an acceptable minimum diet, plummeting to a mere 0.5% in Jonglei State.<\/p>\n Furthermore, the same report indicates that approximately 1.1 million pregnant and breastfeeding women are similarly facing inadequate food intake, hindering their ability to breastfeed exclusively.<\/p>\n Of the 2.1 million children suffering from malnutrition, 1.4 million are classified as having moderate acute malnutrition, while a critical 0.7 million are suffering from severe acute malnutrition.<\/p>\n According to the report, key drivers fueling this surge in malnutrition cases include poor sanitation and inadequate feeding practices, where children consume far less than the minimum acceptable diet.<\/p>\n The report notes that the recent devastating floods have severely impacted access to sanitation.<\/p>\n In flood-affected areas, only 10% of the population has access to improved sanitation, while over 70% practice open defecation.<\/p>\n Additionally, 37% are consuming unsafe drinking water, significantly increasing the risk of illnesses such as fever, cough, and diarrhea among children, particularly in Upper Nile, Jonglei, and Unity States.<\/p>\n The combined impact of recent floods and conflict in parts of Unity, Upper Nile, and Jonglei has drastically contributed to the rise in malnutrition.<\/p>\n This situation has been further compounded by limited access to essential healthcare services for children under five, pregnant women, and breastfeeding mothers.<\/p>\n Moreover, funding cuts to the Ministry of Health and other humanitarian organizations in January 2025 have severely reduced the coverage of essential health and nutrition services.<\/p>\n Compounding the crisis, the nutrition humanitarian response had only received 55% of its required funding as of November 2024.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Kei Emmanuel Duku A recent report by the GCFR on South Sudan’s food security has revealed a staggering estimate of 2.1 million children aged 6 to 59 months suffering from malnutrition between July 2024 and June 2025. The report projects that from April to June 2025, five additional[Read More…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":35774,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/multrition.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35773"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35775,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35773\/revisions\/35775"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}