By Matt Chancey

We have received a lot of inquiries about how Persecution Project’s emergency therapeutic feeding program is progressing, so I wanted to use this article to provide an update to our ministry partners.
For background, we launched this program in November 2024 in response to the appeals of two Persecution Project-supported hospitals in the war-torn Nuba mountains of Sudan.
Doctors and nurses at these locations reported an alarming increase in the number of patients (mostly children) being admitted who suffer from “severe wasting,” which is a fancy word for “starvation.”
The majority of these patients were recent returnees, that is to say, ethnic Nuba people who had lived outside of their mountain homeland but are now back because of the ongoing civil war in other parts of Sudan.


Many of these returnees were on the run for weeks or months, supported by only what they could carry or beg from other displaced families. The stress and malnourishment gradually weakened little bodies to the point of “severe wasting.” The problem is when someone reaches this level of starvation, it can’t be fixed by eating normally.
When American G.I.s liberated the Nazi Death Camps in Europe, they naturally felt compassion for the starving survivors. But by sharing their rations, many inmates died because of the shock to their bodies.


After prolonged starvation, our metabolism changes to conserve energy. If a lot of food is suddenly reintroduced, our digestive system (which has been dormant), has trouble processing it. This can lead to organ failure and death. A special feeding program had to be devised for the starving inmates to slowly bring them back to a safe level where they could begin consuming regular food at regular intervals.
This is exactly what’s happening at our supported hospitals in the Nuba mountains. Patients must be put on a special therapeutic feeding program to bring their bodies “back to zero” so they can start eating normally.

I provide this background because some have asked the question, “What is the goal of this program?” There are costs associated with a month-long feeding program and it’s natural to wonder how success is measured. In other words, will we have to keep feeding these children after one month? How is providing a few weeks of food helpful if the kids go back to starving after the program ends?
The answer is found in the nature of the project and the solution. The project is not to provide regular food for the general population. The project is to provide specialized, therapeutic food to identified patients who cannot eat normally because of prolonged starvation. Once a child reaches the stage of “severe wasting” it doesn’t matter if their pantry is full of food. They are not able to eat it without major risks to their health. So, our feeding program is temporary in nature in that our goal is to get patients stabilized within 30 days.
However, the problem is that there are so many people starving right now in the Nuba, we are having trouble meeting the needs as requested by our supported hospitals.

Our goal has been to treat 1,000 children per month. Thanks to the generosity of our ministry partners, we have been able to meet our goal in the months of November, December, and January.
But there are tens of thousands of children still needing help. Again, these are not children we have to keep feeding month after month. Every month, we hope to save 1,000 additional children from starvation. We would like to continue this project throughout 2025, but that will depend on your continued generosity. If you would like to learn more and help with this very important and time-sensitive need, please visit NubaFamine.com. Thank you again for your prayers and for helping us save many more children than we thought possible when we began this campaign.