EMERGENCY in Sudan: One Year of War

One year after the outbreak of war in Sudan, EMERGENCY’s interventions in the country face enormous difficulties that jeopardise the survival of the population and the viability of its projects.

Among the obstacles are continuous electricity blackouts and interruptions to the internet and telecommunications networks; exponentially increased fuel prices; shortages of basic goods; and difficulties in procuring essential medicines and equipment.

The conflict in Sudan has displaced 6.5 million people within the country – the largest number of internally displaced people in the world – and in 2024, 24.8 million people will need humanitarian assistance. Approximately 65% of the population has no access to healthcare and 70% of hospital facilities in the areas affected by the fighting are no longer functional.

On 15 April 2023, fighting broke out on the streets of Khartoum between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF). EMERGENCY, present in Sudan since 2003, has not abandoned the country; albeit with difficulty, the NGO continues to carry out its activities with a staff of 586 people across the country (20 international, 566 Sudanese) to provide medical care to a population in need.

EMERGENCY’s activities continued in Khartoum with the Salam Centre for Cardiac Surgery and Paediatric Outpatient Clinic, and with the Paediatric Centre in Port Sudan, a city that now hosts tens of thousands of displaced people. In Nyala, South Darfur, activities at the Paediatric Centre have been suspended, but care for cardiac patients continues. EMERGENCY has also opened a Cardiology Outpatient Clinic in Atbara.

Since the conflict began there have been many difficulties – particularly in Khartoum, which was heavily affected by the fighting – but today the increasingly frequent power cuts, the interruption of internet connectivity, and difficulties in obtaining new visas for international staff, including healthcare workers, are seriously impacting the population’s access to services and EMERGENCY’s operations.

“The interruption of the networks has slowed down communications between Khartoum and the other hospitals, and with the Coordination Offices in Italy,” says Franco Masini, Medical Coordinator at the Salam Centre for Cardiac Surgery. “This restriction has also compromised our remote contact with patients from the Salam Centre. Suffice to say that in the course of one year of war, we have lost contact with more than 1,000 of our cardiac patients who need to receive treatment and lifelong therapies. They cannot reach us or contact us. The absence of a network has also made it very difficult to make online bank transfers, preventing the procurement of materials and medicines as well as salary payments to our Sudanese staff.”

The extreme difficulty to bring more international staff into the country and a spiralling fuel crisis with astronomical costs threaten EMERGENCY’s activities on a daily basis.

“We are now on the 23rd day of blackout,” says Andrea Canneva, EMERGENCY Logistics Coordinator in Sudan. “Our generators support the hospital’s activities 24 hours a day. With the intensification of the clashes, finding diesel is more and more challenging and the price of fuel has skyrocketed.”

“Fuel is essential to power the generators that ensure the continuation of the hospital’s activities, like in the operating theatres,” explains Manahel Bader, Head Nurse at the Salam Centre. “But the cost has risen from about one euro per litre to seven. This affects the operating costs of the Salam Centre, as well as the mobility of patients who cannot afford to cover the costs required to reach us from other parts of the country.”

In a context where humanitarian work faces so many obstacles, conditions for the population deteriorate by the day.

“While Khartoum is a ghost town, Port Sudan has the appearance of a huge refugee camp,” reports Masini. “In the last few months, the east of the country has welcomed some 500,000 displaced persons, of whom at least 270,000 have stayed in Port Sudan. Families who cannot afford accommodation live on the streets, without water and in very poor hygienic conditions, which also encourage the spread of diseases such as cholera. In our Paediatric Centre, we treat malnourished children with respiratory and gastro-intestinal tract diseases. Admissions have almost doubled compared to the pre-war average.”

EMERGENCY continues to work in Sudan, standing by the population to ensure that the right to care is always guaranteed and in the hope that the war will end as soon as possible.

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EMERGENCY has been present in Sudan since 2003. In the year since the conflict began, EMERGENCY’s hospitals have conducted 25,000 paediatric examinations and over 1,500 visits to cardiac patients, while 200 open-heart surgeries were performed at the Salam Centre for Cardiac Surgery in Khartoum despite the extremely difficult working conditions.