Test Blog

Yuliia* (42) gave birth to her daughter, Tetiana* (2) in between air raid alerts in Ukraine a month after full-scale war broke out in February 2022. As soon as Tetiana was born, the alerts started again, and Yuliia was moved to a corridor in the hospital with her newborn and listened as the rockets flew overhead. Yuliia said she felt a lot of fear and anxiety not knowing what the next 24 hours would bring. Now, after 1,000 days of war, Yuliia and her daughters – Tetiana, Anna* (9) and Oksana* (5) – sleep in the corridor of their home each night, monitoring for attacks on their city in the Zaporizhzhia region, which is now very close to the front line of the war in Eastern Ukraine. A rocket recently hit 10-15 metres away from their home. Luckily, a wall saved their apartment block from shrapnel damage. Yuliia says the war has impacted on her children. When Tetiana – who has only ever known war in her short life – hears someone slam a door, she says: “there’s an explosion, let’s go to the shelter!” Anna, who has also only ever known war as she was born in 2014 when conflict first erupted in far eastern Ukraine, told her mother that she’s scared a rocket will hit their home. Yuliia’s children attend one of these Child Friendly Spaces, and she said it’s made a huge difference to her daughters’ wellbeing. She says when she’s watching her children in the space, she can tell how they forget about the war for a few hours and just be happy. Yuliia also attended positive parenting sessions organised by Save the Children’s partner. She says the mental health and psychosocial support activities during the sessions have helped her a lot, and she can better communicate with her children in times of stress. Sacha Myers / Save the Children

The MUAC band in this photo shows red which indicates that Ikran* had Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM). Ikran* was treated at the stabilisation centre an hour from her home, when a chest infection caused her to become severely malnourished and weak. At the time of our visit, staff shared their concern that children in the stabilization centre seemed to be taking longer to recover than usual. Due to recent funding cuts, they had run out of the prepackaged F75 fortified milk. The cuts mean that the service as a whole is under threat. At the time of our visit, Save the Children was only able to provide funding for salaries and supplies on a month by month basis, with no certainty as to how long they can sustain them. *Name changed to protect identity Kate Stanworth/ Save the Children

Musa*, 15, lives with his mother, father and nine siblings in a camp for displaced people in Kosti, White Nile state. He is a bubbly young boy who loves to draw and play football. Playing football, he says, is the one thing he does every day to keep himself occupied at a time when life is difficult for his family, following nearly two years of conflict in Sudan, which has seen his family separated and displaced from their home in Khartoum. Save the Children’s cholera response interventions including a city-wide cleaning campaign to stop the spread of one of the worst cholera outbreaks to hit Kosti in recent times, is helping internally displaced families such as Musa*s stay safe during the outbreak. At the height of the outbreak in February, between February 20 and 26, the Ministry of Health reported over 2243 cases of cholera - or an average of over 300 cases a day - in Kosti, with latest figures showing that 3,198 cases were reported as of March 17. At least 86 people are confirmed to have died from the illness during this period. Hamid Abdulsalam/ Save the Children