South Sudan floods displace a million as hunger and diseases loom

Nearly a million people displaced or isolated for months by the worst flooding in memory are now threatened by famine. ‘Our children die in our hands’ The chief of Wangchot village, James Diang, made the decision early during the flooding to send badly affected children to the town centre after several drowned “and everything was being destroyed rapidly.” Now cattle are dying, he said, and survivors have been transported to drier areas. The people of South Sudan put their trust in President Salva Kiir and former armed opposition leader Riek Machar to lead during this transition period, “but now they are failing us,” said the government’s acting deputy director in the area, Kueth Gach Monydhot. “Do you think they will plan for other people when they have failed to implement the peace agreement?” At the clinic in Old Fangak run by the medical charity Doctors Without Borders, Nyalual Chol said the barriers she tried to build against the floodwaters collapsed, and her home quickly collapsed, too. “The water continues to rise and the dykes continue to break and there are people still displaced, yet they don’t have the main necessities,” she said, describing several people often crammed into a single shelter.