South Sudan was already fighting 7 plagues, then along came Covid-19

Born in 2011, South Sudan is the world’s newest nation. But it has been engulfed by a self-inflicted war that has torn apart its social fabric and threatened the fledgling country’s existence.

The emergence of tentative signs of hope were seen in 2018 in the form of the Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict. But post-conflict recovery won’t be easy: out of the 189 countries on the Human Development Index, South Sudan is 186th. The country faces innumerable challenges.

One is, quite simply, to ensure its children survive. South Sudan has an under-five mortality rate of 99 per 1,000 live births, or one child in 10...