Malnutrition: An additional enemy for Sudanese refugee women in Chad’s camps

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Pregnant women suffer from severe weakness that makes childbirth dangerous, while children undergo long treatments for malnutrition.

The Sudanese war has driven more citizens to cross the borders into neighboring countries, including Chad, where malnutrition rates are rising in remote refugee camps. Women and children make up 86 percent of the refugees in these camps, and malnutrition has become yet another deadly threat.

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British Guardian correspondent Kamel Ahmed highlighted the refugee crisis in a report describing the long hours endured by 18-year-old Sudanese refugee Mekka Ibrahim Mohamed, who clung to her seat inside a shaking ambulance struggling through muddy sand in Chad as she went into labor after her uterus ruptured.

The ambulance was making its way through the desert toward a Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in the Mechi camp, more than two hours away.

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Mekka recounted that she had suffered repeated infections during pregnancy and had visited the clinic seven times before labor began. Unable to deliver naturally due to the rupture, she waited two hours for the ambulance, drifting in and out of consciousness from pain. Upon arrival, an emergency cesarean section saved her life and that of her baby.

Her mother, Aisha Khamis Abdallah, 40, feared losing both her daughter and grandson, stressing that the harsh refugee conditions and lack of medical care had turned childbirth into a “battle for survival.”

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Women and children make up about 86 percent of the 878,000 Sudanese refugees living in remote desert camps in Chad, where water and food are scarce, and the distance to the nearest hospital can mean the difference between life and death.

Before the latest wave of displacement, Chad already had the world’s second-highest maternal mortality rate. Today, the dire conditions facing refugee women only worsen this tragedy, as most give birth in critical circumstances or too late to be saved.

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At the Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in Mechi, 824 babies have been delivered this year, most of them emergency cases. Yet, medical staff remain deeply concerned about women who fail to reach the hospital on time due to the long distances or breakdowns of the only ambulance serving tens of thousands of refugees.

Surgeon Aleksandrina Kripovic explained that “every case arriving at the hospital is an emergency,” adding that some women travel on foot or on donkeys, greatly increasing the risk of complications.

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Malnutrition has become an additional enemy: many pregnant women are so weakened that childbirth becomes dangerous, while children undergo long treatments involving fortified milk or therapeutic peanut paste.

After her cesarean section, Mekka spent two months in the hospital recovering from malnutrition, while her newborn remained under close observation. Her husband had to leave the camp in search of work, leaving Mekka dependent on her mother to care for the baby.

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In the nutrition tents, children lie under mosquito nets in suffocating heat as doctors rely on rudimentary tools, such as a scale made from a bucket and a rope.

“Every day I see more sick children arriving,” said refugee mother Souheiba Abdallah Abu Bakr. “The food we receive is poor in quality and not enough. If we were back home, we could farm and take care of ourselves. Here, we live only on what we’re given.”

The World Food Programme warned last June that it would be forced to further cut food aid if no additional funding was received, as UN agencies had secured only 69 percent of the required budget for Chad in 2024.

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In these dire circumstances, women try to earn a meager living. Sixty-five-year-old Azzah Dihia Othman weaves palm leaves to sell in the market, while others work for local farmers for minimal or no pay.

“I suffer from high blood pressure and can’t find my medicine,” said Othman. “Must I die before receiving treatment?”

With no job opportunities, many young men migrate to gold mines in northern Chad or to Libya, leaving women and children to face the harsh desert life alone.

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Among them is 21-year-old Afaf Abdelmalek, who once lived a stable life in El-Fasher before a relative was killed before the family’s eyes. She says she has lost contact with her two brothers and now focuses only on feeding her small family.

Her young niece remains traumatized by her father’s killing and still panics at the sight of motorcycles used by fighters.

The UN Refugee Agency warns that reduced international aid could deprive 155,000 refugee children of education by next year, threatening to doom an entire generation to oblivion in the vast Chadian desert, where the journey for survival seems endless.

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