One year on from the start of the crisis that has left more than 1.5 million people in urgent need of food and shelter, and fleeing for their lives, a new report from CARE says South Sudan is in danger of falling into further crisis if the country’s health system is not significantly improved.

The new report, Critical Diagnosis: The case for placing South Sudan’s healthcare system at the heart of the humanitarian response, argues that South Sudan’s health system should be central to the humanitarian response to the country’s crisis.

CARE Australia CEO, Dr Julia Newton-Howes AM, who recently returned from South Sudan, said that with the world’s attention focused on Ebola and the crises in Gaza and Syria during much of 2014, it was tragic that the crisis facing the people of the world’s youngest nation had fallen away from the world’s attention.

“The conditions that people are enduring in South Sudan are some of the worst that I have ever seen. The equivalent of almost one third of the population of Melbourne is now at risk of starving to death. The scale of the desperation and need across South Sudan cannot be understated,” Dr Newton-Howes said.

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