World Health Director: 680,000 Sudanese refugees fled to Chad, 70% of them children

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General said World Health Organization In his statement, since the start of the civil war in Sudan Last April, around 680,000 refugees entered Chad in search of food and safety, and are part of the 3 million Sudanese who have fled their country.

He said, “I met mothers carrying their children, who had walked for long days to reach the border – they were hungry, tired, alone and afraid of stolen livestock.”

Surprisingly, almost 70% of the refugees who crossed from Sudan to Chad are children, many of them teenagers who have escaped from arbitrary or forced detention.

He explained, the second story is that I visited Ukraine shortly after the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine in 2022, and I also visited a refugee reception center in Poland, where I met a mother from the Mariupol area, who told me when the bombing was heavy. she started, her young daughter was very afraid, she said: “Don’t worry, it’s just a storm and it will pass,” but it didn’t pass, it was a bombing.

He said: I can’t imagine what the long-term impact will be on the mental health of children in Sudan, Ukraine, Gaza, Haiti, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen – or even my country, Ethiopia – or in areas another problem of our world. , and in most countries In these situations, children’s mental health services were already scarce before the conflict began, and now, when they are needed most, they are even more scarce.

He continued: Conflict is only one threat to the mental health of children and adolescents in the world, including the ongoing impact of the Corona pandemic, poverty, violence, cyberbullying, and the crisis of suffering from mental illness more than ever?

Reports indicate that one in 7 teenagers suffer from a mental health problem, and depression, anxiety, and behavioral disorders are among the leading causes of illness and disability among adolescents, and Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young adults. 15 and 29 for each gender, and although… On average, countries allocate less than 2% of their health budgets to mental health, with services for children and young people making up a small proportion of this percentage To Indeed, mental health is seriously underfunded.

In low-income countries, there is less than one child mental health worker for every 10 million people, and even in high-income countries, access to services is often difficult to young people, unevenly distributed, of uneven quality, and of poor quality. However, there is good news: there is more awareness and interest in mental health now than ever before. currently includes 13 countries.

At this year’s World Health Assembly, WHO Member States also adopted a resolution on integrating mental health and psychiatric support in crisis response, including armed conflict.

A group is working Global health Mental health is increasingly integrated into emergency response operations, including in Afghanistan, Chad, Ethiopia, Sudan, Syria and Ukraine.

For example, from 2022, Ukraine, with the support of WHO, has established an Interregional Coordinating Council for Mental Health under the leadership of the Prime Minister, and launched a National Program for Mental Health and Psychosocial Support under the direction of First Lady Olena Zelenska. I met her last year, and her commitment to mental health is very strong, and I appreciate her leadership.

WHO and its partners coordinate more than 280 organizations that provide mental health and psychiatric support in Ukraine.

Even when the war ends, the trauma will still be there for the children of Ukraine, as it will be for the children of Gaza, Lebanon, Sudan and elsewhere it is vital that these children are supported now and in the future.

We look forward to working with all of you to realize the vision that countries had when they founded the World Health Organization in 1948: the highest attainable standard of physical health and mind for all people, of all ages, at all times, as a basic foundation. human right, because there is no health without Mind.