Juba, Sep 11 (IANS): Nearly 800,000 refugees who have fled conflict in Sudan are facing hunger and diseases in South Sudan amid a lack of humanitarian funding and soaring cost of food, a global charity warned Wednesday.

Save the Children said about 794,000 refugees and South Sudanese returnees, including an estimated 476,000 children who have fled to South Sudan since the conflict escalated in April 2023 have seen their food rations squeezed.

"The country's economic crisis, however, threatens to deteriorate the value of the already inadequate food ration even further for those that will continue to receive it," said the charity in a statement, Xinhua news agency reported.

Famari Barro, Save the Children interim South Sudan country director, said South Sudan is in the depths of a humanitarian disaster; already one of the world's poorest countries, reeling from the impacts of the climate crisis and food insecurity.

"Hundreds of thousands of children across the country rely on food rations to survive, many will now be plunged into even further precarity and exposure to malnutrition, disease and protection risks like child marriage or labor as families are forced to desperate measures," Barro added.

The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) provides food rations and cash to refugees and South Sudanese returnees fleeing conflict in Sudan. It said recent funding shortfalls have meant that since 2022, refugees seeking safety in South Sudan only receive half of what the WFP considers a full food ration.

The charity said that further cuts are taking place in the refugee camps, which will affect the majority of Sudanese refugees who fled to South Sudan before April 2023 and will leave many more established refugee families without any direct food assistance.

The refugees have expressed fears that the food cuts affecting the longer-established refugee community in South Sudan will prompt people to leave the camp and even consider going back to Sudan despite a lack of safety.

The charity said conditions for refugees in South Sudan are dire as new arrivals live in flimsy shelters that offer little protection from the elements, while sanitation is poor. It warned that the looming threat of malnutrition from food shortages brings more risk of diseases, with severe acute malnutrition shutting down children's immune systems and making otherwise non-life-threatening conditions like diarrhea potentially lethal.