More than one in five pregnant and breastfeeding women screened by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in the eastern Chadian border town of Adré during the first six months of 2026 were acutely malnourished.
Three-quarters of them belonged to host communities excluded from local food distributions, due to rigid aid rules which limit access strictly to registered refugees amid critical funding shortfalls, MSF said in a statement to APA on Friday.
MSF is calling on international donors to fund Chad’s 2026 response plans and to explicitly include host communities in food and nutrition assistance.
Amid crippling funding cuts, MSF stressed that Chadian authorities and UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, must guarantee that food, water, and health services meet emergency standards for both refugees and host communities before proceeding with any further relocations to Metché and Arkoum.
Since the war in Sudan began, more than 930,000 Sudanese refugees have crossed into Chad, over 80 percent of them women and children.
Over 700,000 have crossed through Adré alone. Since April 2023, UNHCR and Chadian authorities have relocated 646,216 people from border transit sites inland, with 45,321 of those occurring since January 2026 under the accelerated programme.
“Having survived months of relentless violence, refugees arrive in Adré physically shattered, malnourished and deeply traumatised, only to be met with a brutal new reality, finding themselves in areas where host communities are already living in poverty and humanitarian actors remain scarce,” said Léa Ledru, MSF Project Coordinator in Adré. “Relocation does not resolve this: it simply moves the refugee population from one under-resourced host community’s doorstep to another’s.”
Between January and June 2026, MSF screened 5,785 lactating and pregnant women in Adré; 1,225, or 21.2%, were moderately or severely malnourished (GAM), significantly above the 15% emergency threshold that defines a critical humanitarian crisis. This includes 937 women (16.2%) with moderate acute malnutrition (MAM) and 288 (5%) with severe acute malnutrition (SAM), drastically elevating risks of miscarriage, obstetric haemorrhage, and premature birth.
No organisation provides structured treatment for malnourished women; responses are limited to sporadic distributions of fortified flour blends whenever supplies are available. Meanwhile, child malnutrition admissions at the MSF-supported Adré health centre rose 30% between January and April 2026 compared with the same period in 2025.
Financial constraints triggered stockouts of World Food Programme (WFP) supplies for treating MAM in May and June, disrupting care for moderately malnourished children and pregnant and lactating women. Stock delivered at the end of June is projected to run out in September, with no clarity on further donations.
WN/as/APA