Tens of thousands of people came home to check on their homes and reunite with loved ones after Sudan’s army recaptured Khartoum, the country’s capital region, in March.
The shock of returning was tempered by the damage that had been done for nearly two years by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary organization that has been fighting the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) since April 2023, which are widely recognized as Sudanese and the UN as the de facto authority there.
Many returnees started becoming sick in a region where the RSF had systematic plundernied hospitals and food and drug stores.
Omdurman falters
In Omdurman, one of the three cities in the country’s capital, where many of the returnees lived, there were only slightly better living conditions. Due to the RSF’s continued presence in several areas of Omdurman, preventing it from frequent clashes, pillaging, and looting, several of them never came under their control.
According to Dr. Dirar Abeer, a member of Khartoum’s Emergency Response Rooms, neighborhood committees spearheading relief efforts across the country, “thousands of people]return] from Egypt alone.”
According to Dr. Abeer, the crowding contributed to the rapid spread of cholera, a severe, highly contagious diarrhoeal disease that is endemic to Sudan and can be fatal if left untreated.
According to Badawi, a volunteer in Omdurman who declined to give his full name because speaking in a warzone is difficult, “There are a lot of corpses rotting next to]or in] the Nile, and this has partially] caused the spread of infection.”
In Sudan, hundreds have died in the past two weeks from cholera, which has spread throughout several states, including White Nile and Gadarif.
Similar to Khartoum, overcrowding and a lacked essential services in these areas contributed to the spread.
According to Fazli Kostan, the project manager for Doctors Without Borders, which is known by its French names as MSF, basic sanitation and provisions could stop the waterborne disease.
However, he claimed that this is not currently possible because Omdurman’s electricity grids went offline on May 14.
The RSF fired a number of suicide drones that day, which severely damaged major power plants and grids, shutting down water treatment plants, and causing a sharp rise in cases.
People have resorted to drinking contaminated water from the Nile and removing water from the ground after it rains because they lack safe drinking and bathing water, according to Badawi.
Between May 15 and May 25, according to the SAF-backed Ministry of Health, a significant rise in daily cholera deaths occurred in the national capital region, with at least 172 people passing away between May 20 and May 27.
According to the UN, daily cases increased from 90 to more than 815 in the latter half of May.
Patients waited patiently in the streets.
The disease-stricken person frequently flies to the closest hospital, putting strain on an already underdeveloped and underprepared health sector. Local volunteers, however, claimed that many people who don’t have life-threatening symptoms would benefit from staying at home and isolating themselves.
According to them, the overcrowding in hospitals has increased the spread of the disease and increased the strain on the already defunct healthcare system.
The rate of patients coming to the hospitals is much higher than we can handle, according to Kareem al-Noor, a doctor at Omdurman’s al-Nao hospital. “We do not have enough medication or medical tools.”
“The remaining hospitals are full, and people are also waiting for treatment, and there are crowded on the streets,” al-Noor continued.
Dr. Abeer believes that the health authorities, which are funded by SAF, are not adequately combating the epidemic. She believes the current health authorities could be doing more, despite the fact that the RSF had largely destroyed the sector.
Al Jazeera emailed Dr. Montasser Towarra, the spokesperson for the MoH, to inquire about the steps the ministry is taking to assist volunteers and provide basic necessities.
By the time this article was published, he had not responded.
The crisis is made worse by hunger.
A serious hunger crisis also exists in Sudan.
Millions of Sudanese have struggled to feed their families as a result of the civil war’s spoiled harvests, the systematic looting of markets, food aid, and the destruction of homes and livelihoods.
About 25 million people, or more than half the population, are currently experiencing severe food shortages, according to the UN.
According to Alex De Waal, an expert on Sudan and famine, hunger can weaken people’s bodies and cause an acute rise in contagious diseases.
He noted that people who are also near starvation have always been more likely to die from diseases, especially children.
De Waal warned that “we could see an excess of hundreds of thousands of deaths]resulting from these factors over the coming year.”
Up to one million children could perish from cholera unless the spread is stopped right away, according to the UN.
De Waal argued that the only way to address the health crisis is to repair basic infrastructures like water and sewers, which would improve sanitation.
He thinks that the army, which is essentially the ruling body, shouldn’t prioritize fixing the army’s fundamental services.
Nabil Abdullah, a spokesperson for the SAF, was contacted by Al Jazeera to inquire about whether the army plans to repair crucial resources like bombed electricity grids.
According to Abdullah, “The Ministry of Health is in charge of these inquiries, not the army.”
Additionally, the MoH’s Tawarra did not respond to these inquiries.
De Waal believes that the army prioritizes combat operations against the RSF.
Source: Aljazeera
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