Severe flooding is affecting an estimated 800,000 people across a vast area of South Sudan, overwhelming homes and leaving people without enough food, water or shelter.

Many areas have been flooded since July, while river levels are continuing to rise, worsening the crisis.

Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is responding by providing medical care in flood-affected areas of Greater Pibor, Jonglei, Upper Nile and Unity states. The needs for medical care are increasing with a sharp rise in malaria cases and fears that there will be outbreaks of other diseases.

"We are preparing for an increase in diseases in all flood-affected areas, such as diarrhoeal diseases and

"This year’s floods are happening against the backdrop of multiple emergencies including COVID-19, increased violence and fighting, a growing economic crisis, and high levels of food insecurity," said Ibrahim Muhammad, MSF country manager for South Sudan. 

"Now, we are preparing for an increase in diseases in all flood-affected areas, such as diarrhoeal diseases and malaria, given the high risks caused by displacement and crowding, poor hygiene conditions, and a lack of functioning latrines." 

Malaria, measles and malnutrition

In Greater Pibor, one of the worst-affected areas of South Sudan, MSF is running mobile clinics in five villages and an emergency clinic in Pibor town. 

In the last two months, we have treated more than 13,000 patients in and around Pibor, including more than 5,000 children under five years old. MSF treated about half these patients for malaria and more than 160 children for measles.

Malnutrition is also rapidly increasing in the Pibor area, and MSF's mobile clinics are preparing to provide additional nutrition treatment for young children, alongside our inpatient therapeutic feeding centre in Pibor town. 

Our teams are distributing 60,000 litres of drinking water per day in Pibor as wells have been contaminated by floodwaters. 

However, with water levels still rising, we are concerned about how protected the clinic in Pibor is, and are looking for alternative sites on higher ground outside of town.  

Heavy rains

In Old Fangak, a town of about 30,000 people in a wetland area of Jonglei state, flooding began in July and water levels are continuing to rise.

"Many houses are affected on a daily basis," said Dorothy I. Esonwune, MSF’s project coordinator in Old Fangak. 

"The focus of everybody in Old Fangak is on scooping out water from around their homes and building up dikes out of mud."

An additional 3,000 people arrived in the town in late September after heavy rains flooded their homes in the surrounding villages.

So far, our medical teams at the Old Fangak hospital have provided care for about 70 of the displaced people, including for respiratory tract infections and acute watery diarrhoea. 

Most of the town's latrines have flooded, raising the risk of waterborne diseases.