Over 400,000 children in the volatile Kasai region in Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, are suffering through acute malnutrition and are at risk of dying if immediate intervention is not conducted, UN has warned.
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"This nutrition crisis and food insecurity in the Kasai region follows the displacement of thousands of families who have been living for months in very harsh conditions," Tajudeen Oyewale, the acting head of UNICEF in the central African country said in a statement on Sunday.
Nearly 220 health centers have been damaged, looted and destroyed in the region, per the UN news center.
"Approximately 220 health centers were destroyed, looted or damaged, leading to a weakening of the health delivery system, reduced access to healthcare and an increased risk in the spread of communicable diseases like measles," the UN news center reported.
"Guaranteeing access to basic health and nutrition services to returning populations is essential to help malnourished children survive and thrive," Oyewale added.
The poverty-stricken, conflict-torn central African nation, the size of a country almost twice the area of Britain, France, and Germany combined, has been suffering an escalated 18-month-long internal war between the local groups and the government authorities, following the killing of Kamwina Nsapu, a tribal chieftain in August 2016, throwing the country into chaos and spurring mass violence, mass displacement and slumping agricultural output.
Nearly 2.7 million people have been displaced internally by conflict, violence or disasters, as per the latest figures released by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, IDMC, in Africa and Norwegian Refugee Council, NRC, earlier this December.
"With so many humanitarian crises worldwide, the situation in DRC is at risk of being ignored while it develops into the biggest emergency of 2018," Mohammed Abdiker, director of operations and emergencies at the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), said in a statement.
In October, UN activated level 3 emergency in the diamond-rich Kasai region but, "Donor fatigue, geopolitical disinterest, and competing crises have pushed DR Congo far down the list of priorities for the international community. This deadly trend is at the expense of millions of Congolese. If we fail to step up now, mass hunger will spread and people will die. We are in a race against time," NRC's Country Director in DRC, Ulrika Blom, said.
In response to the crisis, "UNICEF and partners provided therapeutic nutritional care to more than 50,000 children aged between 6-59 months in the region this year. However, lack of resources has severely impacted aid delivery," the UN news center stated.