An international humanitarian organization is warning that a catastrophic hunger crisis in Sudan is even worse than feared. Doctors Without Borders has screened tens of thousands of children and women in displaced people's camps in North Darfur state. It found a third were malnourished, double the threshold for a nutrition emergency. A year of war has had a devastating humanitarian impact across the country, especially in the Darfur region. The BBC has managed to get rare footage from there. Our correspondent, Barbara Pletush, now reports viewers may find some images in this report distressing.

The youngest casualties of Sudan's war are often not victims of bombs and bullets. This pediatric hospital in Northern Darfur is a front line in the country's hunger crisis. Signs of malnutrition are stark. It's difficult for outsiders to get access to the region. We She worked with a local cameraman to film these images. The son of Haleima Mohamed Suleiman is getting emergency nutrition after bouts of diarrhea and malaria.

We just don't have enough food here, she says.

We're farmers but aren't able to harvest enough now, and there's no other income. Medicine is hard to get. In the next bed, Amin Ahmed Ali is caring for six-month-old twins, slowly recovering from weeks of dysentry. Country. Doctors treated malnutrition here before the war, much more so now.

The numbers have doubled. Every month and the next month, the numbers increase. Despite the fact that we, in Northern Darfur, we had a system, a full nutritional program, which continued, but it lapsed because of the war.

It's a refuge of last resort, but those who make it here are the lucky ones. In the nearby Zam Zam camp for displaced people, they queue for food. There isn't much of that, nor of clean water or health care. Illnesses that could once be treated now kill. One child here dies every two hours. So says the charity Doctors Without Borders, the last international humanitarian still on the ground. They found that one-third of the camp's children under the age of five are malnourished, and so are their mothers. Gizma Abu Bakr is living that pain. She lost three children in four months. One was three years old, another two, another was six months.

I couldn't afford to take them to hospital. The pharmacy demanded too much money. My first child died on the way home from there, and the second child died after six days. The baby fell sick and died three days later. People are sick and hungry. The displaced people have no jobs.

Zam Zam is one of Sudan's oldest and largest camps, formed by those who fled ethnic violence in Darfur 20 years ago. So already fragile. But the latest war between the army and its paramilitary rivals has displaced more than 8 million people, blocked aid, shut down the economy. These images show just how How brave the situation is in other parts of Darfur. A regional emergency worker sent them to us from the Southern and Central states. The boy's mother pleading for help to feed her children. Anything she says, even something small. Aid agencies say without much greater access and more food supplies, that won't happen.

Msf is running-I spoke to Doctors Without Borders at their Nairobi headquarters. We have a nutritional crisis It's a catastrophic nutrition crisis. The children that we screened in the camp of Zamzam is at the tip of the iceberg. We're talking about only one camp.

So it could be much worse.

It could be much worse, yes.

This little boy may live, but if the war stretches into another year, many, many other children will die. Barbara Plet usher, BBC News, Nairobi.

Let's now get more on the findings that acute malnourishment is so widespread in civil war ravaged Sudan that it reaches a double the threshold for a nutrition emergency. Let's speak to our Africa correspondent, Barbara Plet usher, who is in Nairobi. Barbara, what has been the international response to this? Because part of the difficulty, is actually getting supplies through, isn't it?

That's the chief difficulty in terms of the emergency situation, yes. Well, the results of this report have not actually been officially published yet, but the Without Borders shared them with the BBC, so there hasn't been a specific response to this report. But there was plenty of warning about it. The organization did a rapid assessment in this particular camp, this refugee camp in Northern Darfur in January, and found alarming levels of malnutrition. And now they supplemented that with a mass screening of more than 60,000 women and children and found that that confirmed the results. But it actually showed that the level of malnutrition among children was higher than January showed. And so they have been really talking about this, pressing the international international community to press the Sudanese warring parties to allow more aid in. Now, both sides, the Sudanese Army and the rapid support forces, have been accused in various ways of obstructing humanitarian work. But the focus has been in recent months on the army because they blocked the main crossing points between Chad and Sudan, between Chad and Darfur. They said because this was to stop weapons getting into the RSF, but then it also stopped food.

So a A lot of the international immediate emergency diplomacy has been to ease that. It did ease somewhat. The WFP managed to get two convoys in last month, but it's not something consistent, and it's not something seen everywhere. Again, crossing conflict lines has been virtually impossible. So access is a big thing that the international community has been pushing on. Then, as you probably heard in the report, flooding the zone with food. There hasn't been food suppliers to this camp, we were told, since last year, around May or so. It is very dependent on international aid because they are displaced people. So just really getting a huge numbers of supplies in so that this crisis can be addressed.

Of course, Barbara, what's really needed is a peace deal.

Yes, what's needed is an end to the fighting and a restoration of everything that was destroyed because it's not just about emergency food supplies, it's about civilian infrastructure being destroyed, it's about hospitals not working. It's about farms being burned so that you can't plant crops, stores being looted, all of these things. Peace deal has been very elusive, as many of us who have been watching this conflict over the past year can attest. There have been a number of attempts which have not worked out. The US has just appointed or recently appointed a special envoy who's been working at trying to get another round going in Saudi Arabia. He says he's hopeful that could happen in the middle of this month, and that crucially, this would bring in some of the key regional players like Egypt, which supports the army, and the United Arab Emirates, which backs the rapid support forces, and hoping that that can be another boost of diplomacy to try to get some resolution. But he did say the odds are not fantastic, but we have to give it a try.

Thank you very much indeed, Barbara Platt-Oshida.