Akobo faces hunger crisis after mass displacement and hospital looting
Akobo's only functioning hospital was looted as more than 200,000 people fled, leaving the county exposed to hunger, cholera and a fast-moving Ebola risk.
Akobo's hunger crisis is becoming a public health trap. Conflict, flooding, recurrent displacement and a stripped health system have left the county in Jonglei State exposed to a disease outbreak that could move faster than any response.
South Sudanese government forces issued a 72-hour evacuation order for Akobo County on March 6 ahead of planned military operations, and the exodus quickly overwhelmed the area. The Norwegian Refugee Council said the directive left an estimated 112,000 people without access to basic services, including healthcare, while more than 200,000 people fled Akobo town and surrounding areas between March 7 and 9. Nearly 38,000 crossed into Ethiopia, and Akobo hospital, the only functional health facility in the area, was looted.
The breakdown did not stop at the county line. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said renewed fighting between the South Sudan People’s Defence Forces and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army in Opposition since December 29, 2025 had worsened the emergency across Jonglei. By March 13, more than 267,000 people had been displaced across Jonglei, Lakes, Upper Nile and Central Equatoria states. In Akobo, OCHA said at least 100,000 people had crossed into Ethiopia, while no humanitarian assistance had yet reached displaced populations there, many of them surviving on limited food and sheltering under trees.
The wider hunger picture is just as severe. On April 28, United Nations agencies said 7.8 million people in South Sudan faced high levels of acute food insecurity between April and July 2026, including 73,300 in catastrophe, while 2.2 million children were suffering from acute malnutrition. Dr. Humphrey Karamagi, the acting UN humanitarian coordinator, said partners had teams and supplies pre-positioned to scale up emergency food assistance, protection, nutrition and health services in Akobo, but warned that the window was narrow before the rainy season. He said Akobo was projected to face catastrophic hunger and malnutrition in the same April-to-July period.
That combination makes Ebola especially dangerous. The World Health Organization says Ebola first occurred in 1976 in Nzara, in what is now South Sudan, and has an average case fatality rate of around 50 percent, with past outbreaks ranging from 25 to 90 percent. WHO says outbreak control depends on surveillance, contact tracing, laboratory services, safe burials, infection prevention and control, vaccination when relevant, and social mobilization, a chain of defenses that becomes fragile when staff are displaced, roads flood and health posts are looted.
South Sudan is already under strain from overlapping emergencies driven by conflict, climate shocks, displacement and large-scale disease outbreaks, and WHO says 6.3 million people will require health assistance in 2026. In Akobo, where WHO and UNICEF have long described cholera as a recurring threat because of limited clean water, poor sanitation and inadequate healthcare infrastructure, the loss of the hospital and the collapse of access leave one local crisis one infection away from something far larger.
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