Buried.News

The New Yorker documentary “Rovina’s Choice” opens with footage of the Kakuma Refugee Camp in northern Kenya, which houses about 300,000 people, many of whom fled South Sudan’s civil war. The film describes residents facing reduced international aid that supports basic survival needs.

Rovina Naboi, a mother of nine, recounts traveling 12 kilometers to reach the nearest clinic for her youngest child, Jane Sunday, whose body was weakened by malnutrition and who later died. The clinic is described as understaffed, and Naboi reports she had to leave abruptly to find food for her other children.

Atul Gawande, the film’s narrator and executive producer, states that malnutrition deaths are preventable and that an effective intervention had been developed and delivered before being withdrawn. He warns of further downstream effects from the reduction in aid, including declines in vaccination and loss of control of HIV and tuberculosis, which he says will be harder to detect while affecting far larger numbers of people.