Residents of the Hassa Hissa camp volunteer at an ACT/Caritas feeding center to mix the supplementary food and prepare it for distribution to fellow camp residents. Photo: Chris Herlinger/CWS

ZALENGEI, Sudan—The World Food Program said earlier this week the war in Darfur has made it difficult to reach some 360,000 persons in need of food assistance.

While that figure would seem to belie the overall improvement in the humanitarian situation—by all accounts, humanitarian efforts such as the Church World Service-supported ACT/Caritas work have made a marked impact in Darfur in the last six months—all could change rapidly depending on events.

“The nutrition situation is very delicate and very fragile,” Basra Hassan, a Somali nutritionist working with the ACT/Caritas program in the West Darfur city of Zalengei, said mindful of ongoing problems. “It could turn back within weeks to the situation it was six to seven months ago.”

Luckily, the ACT/Caritas program has implemented a number of supplementary feeding programs in a number of locales, including the Hassa Hissa Camp on the edge of the city of Zalengei—one of three such centers in the Zalengei area.

On one recent morning, the staff of the Hassa Hissa feeding center provided weekly food rations—including supplementary food and protein mixtures—to more than 80 young mothers, 80 pregnant women, and 130 children under five, about a quarter of the total number of those served.

The center provides rations for camp residents four days a week, and residents of the camp volunteer to mix the supplementary food and prepare it for distribution.

In operation for about a month, the feeding center has been going without stopping, said Darfur nutritionist Salahedin Mousa Mohammed, 35, a coordinator of the operation.

“We needed to open a center here,” Salahedin said. “The needs have been great.”