When Mary Abdullah arrived at Bunj Hospital in the north of South Sudan eight days ago with her 13-month-old daughter, Jote, she feared the worst.

"When I brought her here, I was thinking ... this girl will not survive," she said.

Weighing just five kilograms, Jote was suffering from anemia and malnutrition, one of thousands of underweight babies in the East African country, where the United Nations estimates 2.3 million children are starving.

Abdullah, 30, typically feeds her family with the money she earns collecting firewood. Walking seven kilometres from her home across Maban County to reach the hospital meant losing days of income.

When she arrived, Abdullah found that since the reduction of some of the funding the hospital receives from the U.S. — administered through UNHCR, the

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