Chad: Admissions of malnourished children up 77% in Am Timan, one in four children screened is affected

The therapeutic nutritional unit at the provincial hospital in Am Timan, in the Salamat province (southeastern Chad), recorded a 77% increase in child admissions between January and June 2026, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) announced in a statement published on October 7, 2026. The trend accelerated starting in April, at the beginning of the lean season, those weeks when the previous year's reserves are exhausted and the new harvest is still far off.

The screening conducted by the organization between April and June 2026 gives the measure of the phenomenon: out of 1,676 children aged 6 to 59 months examined in the localities supported by MSF, 4.8% were suffering from severe acute malnutrition and 21.4% from moderate acute malnutrition. In total, more than one in four children screened showed some form of acute malnutrition.

When the harvest decides everything

MSF links this deterioration to poor harvests and lower yields, which deprive families of income at the same time as food. Stocks run out during the rainy season, at the very moment when flooding makes roads impassable and isolates entire villages from health facilities.

Fadija Hammad, 25, a farmer from the village of Angalat who is five months pregnant, arrived with her 15-month-old daughter. "The money we have to live on comes from the harvests," she explains in the MSF statement. For many families, the cost of transport and the days of work lost in the fields weigh as heavily as the illness itself in the decision to go to the hospital.

Malaria and measles worsen the situation

Malnutrition never strikes alone. MSF cites malaria, acute respiratory infections, diarrhea, and measles, which weaken already fragile bodies and turn a common illness into a life-threatening emergency. The organization states that it has opened ten care facilities closer to the villages, as well as three therapeutic feeding units in Ablelaye and Mina, in the Moïssala zone (in the south of the country).

The system combines early screening in communities, hospital care for the most serious cases, and training for Chadian staff, according to Dr. Assoumana Halarou, MSF medical coordinator in Chad. The goal is to identify children before they reach the severe stage, when treatment remains simple and inexpensive.

A challenge of food sovereignty

Salamat is not a conflict zone: it is an agricultural region where children's health depends directly on a harvest and a passable road. The seasonality of hunger in the Sahel is known, documented, and predictable year after year; it calls less for humanitarian emergency than for sustainable investments in crop storage, rural roads, and local health centers.

Chad is also hosting hundreds of thousands of people who have fled the Sudanese conflict, putting additional pressure on already strained health services. The increase noted in Am Timan concerns Chadian families settled on their own land, and serves as a reminder that child nutrition remains a central indicator of public policy on the continent.