OVERCROWDED refugee camps in eastern Chad need urgent funding as a “dire” humanitarian crisis is exacerbated by the spillover from a deadly conflict in Sudan, the United Nations has warned.

More than a million people in Chad, including refugees whose numbers are at a 20-year high, face losing access to lifesaving aid unless more funding is raised to help, the UN World Food Programme said.

The conflict between feuding generals in Sudan has killed more than 5,000 people and displaced over five million, according to UN figures.

The UN warns that the conflict is on course to create the world’s worst hunger crisis, with a third of Sudan’s 18 million people facing acute food insecurity already.

At refugee camps in eastern Chad, a lack of clean drinking water and sanitation is causing dangerous diseases to spread.

Doctors Without Borders said that it has recorded almost 1,000 cases of hepatitis E in the camps and several pregnant women have died.

“The situation is dire in all camps,” said Erneau Mondesir, the group’s medical co-ordinator in the region.

“Without swift action to improve sanitation infrastructure and enhance people’s access to clean water, we risk witnessing a surge in preventable illnesses and unnecessary loss of life.”

World Food Programme representative Pierre Honnorat said: “The spillover from the crisis in Sudan is overwhelming an underfunded and overstretched humanitarian response in Chad.

“We need donors to prevent the situation from becoming an all-out catastrophe.”

Analysts also fear the humanitarian situation could cause Chad’s own political tensions to erupt.

In February, opposition leader Yaya Dillo was killed in the capital.

And protests have been taking place across the country against interim president Mahamat Deby Into.

Mr Into seized power after his father, who ran the country for more than three decades, was killed during battles with opposition groups in 2021.

Finances and aid supplies at humanitarian operations are critically low, which will “increase competition over resources between refugees and host communities in eastern Chad, further fuelling local tensions and regional instability,” said Andrew Smith of analysis firm Verisk Maplecroft.