South Sudan's English Daily Newspaper
"We Dare where others fear"

By Awan Achiek
The New York-based global organization Action Against Hunger in partnership with Right2Grow on Friday trained about 80 journalists in Juba on nutrition and sanitation reporting.
Sulaiman Ken Sesay, Action Against Hunger’s Country Director for South Sudan said the objectives of the training is to equip journalists with the skill to report on malnutrition, WASH best practices as well as strengthen effective collaboration between and humanitarian actors.
“For today’s training, the focus and objectives of this media training is to rationalize how South Sudanese media addresses critical issues such as nutrition and WASH,” Sulaiman said during the opening of training in Juba.
He explained that the training aims to empower journalists with skills to help in addressing nutrition issues affecting young children, adolescents, adults, and the elderly as well as nutrition in an emergency situation.
“To actively contribute to eradicating malnutrition in children under five years old and so this fight is not only for the ministry of health, is not only for the government and is not only for humanitarian actors, it is a fight for all,” he said.
He believed that at the end of the training, journalists would acquire new knowledge on nutrition, disseminate correct nutrition information to the public as well as become nutrition champions.
“This year, we are working closely with local authorities, with communities in the fight against malnutrition and so this program is to bring on board the media so that together we can fight against malnutrition.”
The latest Integrated Food Security Classification (IPC) report released last week said an estimated 1.65 million children under the age of five are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition from July 2023 to June 2024.
It said that the nutrition situation is expected to deteriorate through the next lean season with 67 counties projected to be facing serious, critical, or very critical malnutrition levels across the country.
The UN agencies blamed the prevalence of disease, poor access to safe water sources and sanitation, food insecurity, and inadequate feeding practices – compounded by high numbers of children returning from Sudan among the key contributing factors to the increased acute malnutrition rates.