Post by Concern Worldwide

In the crowded health centre, the air is heavy with heat, dust and worry. More than fifty mothers and their children are waiting, sitting on the sunbaked soil. Health workers move through the noise. Housna is a 25-year-old mother-of-two. She is here today with her baby daughter, Rania: “She had a high fever. When she became sick, she stopped playing and she was never in a happy mood.” In a country like Chad, with limited health care, a common case of fever or diarrhoea can be fatal. Sick children stop eating. Without intervention, they become malnourished. Some become too weak to recover. Between October 2025 and September 2026, an estimated two million children aged under five will suffer acute malnutrition in Chad. “Sometimes we eat three times a day, sometimes two, but it is not easy to get the food,” says Housna. “When we don’t have food, we usually go to our neighbour’s house to borrow some food for our children.” Housna and her family live near Lake Chad, which is bordered by four countries; Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria. Housna’s husband sells fish. But Lake Chad is disappearing. Since the 1960s, the Lake has shrunk by 90%. Climate change and insecurity is undermining an entire way of life for millions of people in the Lake Chad Basin. The violence of non-state armed actors, once restricted to northeastern Nigeria, has spread throughout the region. In Housna’s home province, markets are looted, and people are afraid to travel. “The situation now is bad compared to before. In the past, we were living well because we had places to do agriculture, and the lake was also full of water. We would go there to catch fish. Now, with the insecurity in the area, we cannot move freely as we would want to.” Concern, in partnership with International Rescue Committee, and with humanitarian funding from the European Union, is supporting health centres in Western Chad to treat malnutrition in children aged five and under. Concern is improving the standard of care available by training health workers, providing equipment, and ensuring a regular supply of medicine and Ready-to-Eat-Therapeutic-Food (RUTF); a nutrient-rich paste, used to treat malnutrition in children. Housna’s daughter will recover. After diagnosing the child as malnourished, the health workers provided RUTF and medicine to treat the fever. “I appreciate how the doctors do their work,” says Housna. “When we bring our children, they are always ready to receive us. It was not like this before. We did not have a health centre in our village. We had to go very far for treatment.” All names have been changed. EU in Emergencies 📸 Eugene Ikua