JUBA, April 9 (Xinhua) -- Eight patients, including five children, died during a grueling three-hour journey to seek medical treatment for cholera in South Sudan after U.S. funding cuts forced local clinics to close, a global charity said on Wednesday.

Save the Children said the children from a remote area of Akobo County in the country's eastern region, along with three adults, died in March while walking from their village to seek treatment at the nearest health facility in Akobo town.

"There should be global moral outrage that the decisions made by powerful people in other countries have led to child deaths in just a matter of weeks," Chris Nyamandi, the charity's country director in South Sudan, said in a statement issued in Juba, the capital of South Sudan.

The patients walked in the blazing sun, with temperatures reaching as high as 40 degrees Celsius, and without access to clean water, shade or medicine, according to the charity.

"It is critical that the world wakes up to the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in South Sudan -- a country where four out of five people need aid to survive," Nyamandi said.

The deaths were among the first to be directly linked to funding cuts imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump, who froze funding for global health programs after taking office in January.

Nyamandi said that earlier this year, these children and adults would have had access to lifesaving treatment in one of the 27 health facilities that provided free, critical healthcare for conditions like malnutrition and cholera.

However, these services are no longer available due to foreign aid cuts this year, with seven of the facilities being shut completely and the remaining 20 only partially operational. Enditem

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