When Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) launched an emergency intervention in Tambura, South Sudan, in December 2021, the level of devastation was clear – 80,000 people had been displaced, a significant proportion of the community had been brutally killed, and the looting and destruction of the only hospital meant that people did not have access to medical care.

The conflict in Tambura, which largely ran along ethnic lines, began in early 2021 but escalated significantly between June to September. It decimated the population.

A retrospective mortality survey carried out by MSF in March 2022 found an average of 5.5 deaths per 10,000 people each day over a period of nine months. Many people living in displacement camps still have not found their loved ones, while others know their family members were killed, but feel too unsafe to retrieve their bodies.