Coronavirus will be catastrophic to Africa’s most vulnerable nations – we cannot leave these people behind

I am working with the International Rescue Committee to raise an alarm about the disaster we will soon see when Covid-19 reaches crowded camps, slums, and remote areas where medical care is distant or nonexistent

Like everyone else, I am feeling a lot of anxiety as I watch Covid-19 wreak havoc not only in my own country, but across our global community. But unlike too many, I am immensely privileged to have access to healthcare, running water, and food. This glaring inequality is the reason I have spent the last two decades doing whatever I could to support humanitarian endeavours.

My travels have taken me to areas riven by conflict including Darfur, South Sudan, Chad, Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo where there is suffering, terror, starvation, displacement and every terrible thing that wars wreak on innocent people.

Today, I am joining the International Rescue Committee (IRC) to raise an alarm about the catastrophe we will soon see when the coronavirus reaches crowded camps, slums, and remote areas where medical care is distant or nonexistent. The result will be unthinkable.

A recent report by the IRC predicts as many as 3.2 million deaths from Covid-19 across fragile countries. But the virus will also bring another crisis. Already, 135 million people face food shortages that have been recently exacerbated by historic swarms of locusts in Africa. As harvests and sales are disrupted, millions of families will lose their meagre incomes, and the number of people suffering from malnutrition will significantly increase. The World Food Programme estimates that 265 million people could be “pushed to the brink of starvation by the end of this year”.

As governments in the developed world understandably dedicate their resources to managing the effects of Covid-19 in their own countries, in the most vulnerable African nations, essential humanitarian assistance will shrink. As borders and airports close, lifesaving food assistance and health programmes will be halted. South Sudan, a country close to my heart, is particularly vulnerable.

At present, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network estimates that nearly the entire nation of 11 million people is already experiencing “crisis-level” food insecurity. Without ongoing food assistance, 20,000 people in South Sudan will be in a state of famine.

Almost one year ago, I returned to South Sudan for a third visit – this time with the IRC – after hearing about a new and effective method of addressing malnutrition. South Sudan was still on life support as its people struggled to recover from the years of war that left 7.5 million in need of humanitarian assistance and more than six million on the brink of starvation. The conflict devastated at least half of the health facilities, which were already few and far between.

Existing clinics are poorly equipped, understaffed, and unable to meet the need for care. This is especially problematic for malnourished children whose closest health centre may be located miles from their remote communities.

This became very real to me when during one of my earlier trips to South Sudan I visited a crowded clinic on the outskirts of the capital. There were so many mothers with children that they spilled out of the door far onto the desert. Inside, I shared a bench with Miriam as she held her beautiful baby girl whose enormous eyes never left her mother’s face. Miriam told me that she had walked for five days through the heat and the dangers to reach this clinic. As we sat there in silence, her baby died.

But the IRC has done something remarkable to change the lives of mothers like Miriam. Together with other NGOs and in partnership with ministries of health, the IRC is working to make treatment for acute malnutrition available directly in communities where families live. In South Sudan, the IRC piloted training community health workers to treat malnourished children using a high-calorie peanut-based therapeutic food.

This approach can not only make treatment more available to families who need it – families like Miriam’s – but can reduce their need to visit health facilities, a life-saving act that will reduce the spread of Covid-19. Sadly, this approach is not yet widely implemented in South Sudan or elsewhere. With 50 million children under five years old already impacted by acute malnutrition, aid agencies and governments need additional support to swiftly adopt this method that will save lives and better protect developing nations through the Covid-19 crisis and beyond.

Here in my own country, the US, we are experiencing extreme levels of hardship and hunger, but we cannot abandon our brothers and sisters in South Sudan and throughout the poorest countries around the world. Please visit rescue.org for more information and the opportunity to get involved.