By CHRISTIAN FRANKLIN
Opinion Editor
Finding out that five children have died from walking in scorching heat with their bodies in agonizing pain due to the effects of cholera is a shocking reality that could have been avoided.
After walking for hours in a desperate search for hospital care, the changes that have been made are horribly wrong.
According to the New York Times these deaths were not caused by war or even by a natural disaster.
The reason why these deaths took place is because of a policy change. If the clinics just a few miles away didn’t get shut down due to Trump‘s administration cutting off aid, lives wouldn’t have been lost.
Reports from Save the Children said that seven out of 27 health facilities in Okubo County, South Sudan, have been shut down altogether, and a few remaining clinics are sustaining at a diminishing rate.
The clinics didn’t just provide protection from cholera; they were the main source of nutrition support, vaccinations, and any other maternal care that were never far from the doorstep. Now the facilities are operated by volunteers, and they have no means of transportation or medicine or even clean water to offer.
This result was predictable and it makes it more tragic. Children are dying, and their parents can’t afford the basic luxury of healthcare.
Many of the citizens are collapsing under the blistering sun, falling victim to dehydration. While all that is happening, the cholera disease is easily treatable, and medication costing simple pennies continues to spread in the absence of proper sanitation and accessibility.
South Sudan is facing a battle in containing their worst cholera outbreak in over two decades. Following the World Health Organization, there have been over 47,000 suspended and confirmed cases since September 2024.
With the numbers being as high as they are, they only show reported cases and not the unconfirmed ones.
This is truly a one-of-a-kind humanitarian crisis, and it remains invisible to the world. But where is the efficiency that is supposed to be in place to stop deaths from multiplying?
We can’t forget that South Sudan is not a failed state by nature; it was built off poverty and maintained by battering war and international neglect.
Since being independent in 2011, they have heavily relied on foreign aid just to even meet the most basic needs of a population.
The foreign assistance sent over wasn’t just a luxury; it was a necessity, and making the policy shift resulted in a death sentence for those most vulnerable.
The United States spent $760 million in aid back in 2023, and that figure sounds big, but on a grand scale, it’s only a fraction of federal spending, and the results offered real hope to a nation in need.
There is still time to make changes, but the only way that will be made possible is by protecting the innocent and requiring political encouragement.
This was allowed to happen as a result of our own leaders, and real change needs to happen starting with them.