Hope and survival in Chad

“This is a catastrophic time,” says Hissan Arabi Sahanay. He’s talking about conditions in Farchana, the subdistrict he heads in Chad that is now home to over 56,000 refugees fleeing violence in neighbouring Sudan.

It’s a sobering statistic to which Tahani, 20, and her twin baby boys have recently been added. Adam and Adeeb, 21 months old at the time they escaped Sudan, were under exceptional strain almost from birth. Their father went missing in the chaos of conflict, leaving the family’s rescue to Tahani and a relative. Scooping the boys up in their arms, the foursome dodged shootings and killings on the road as they ran for the border in June 2023.

They escaped that catastrophe only to encounter another: severe child malnutrition. Of the two boys, Adam was particularly hard hit, weighing just 13 pounds and falling. The physician who attended to him at a nutrition and rehabilitation clinic lamented, “We can’t control it.”

But with the provision by World Vision and the World Food Programme of a fortified milk product called F-75, the seemingly irreversible was reversed. F-75 is a type of therapeutic food whose energy-rich properties are designed to help children survive and recover from severe malnutrition. In Adam’s case, it was instrumental in helping restore his kidney and liver function.

Both boys made a full recovery and are growing again. Today, despite the humanitarian crisis they continue to face as refugees, they’ve reclaimed one essential part of their childhood: the smiles and laughter every boy and girl deserves. Tahani still doesn’t know the whereabouts of her husband, but she has her children and a chance to start over.

World Vision is working to help more families like Tahani’s by bolstering the clinic’s resources. This includes a water system and the electricity needed to provide the oxygen used to support the treatment of child malnutrition.

World Vision Canada is active in Chad and Sudan. In 2023, as a result of various program interventions, 1,800 malnourished children in Chad and 3,960 in Sudan were admitted to therapeutic nutrition programs.