UN says doctors in Sudan are doing all they can to provide support to people

By Rédaction Africanews with AP

Amid the wind and heat, doctors like Ikhlas Ahmed Abdalla Adam are doing everything they can to help people in Sudan’s Northern State.

The United Nations population agency (UNFPA)says this includes going so far as to donate their own blood.

It is supporting emergency obstetric and reproductive health services at a clinic in Al-Affad Camp and Al-Dabbah Maternity Hospital.

Assistance from the agency includes training community midwives, assisting displaced women, and roving midwife teams.

Ikhlas says she worked at the Saudi Hospital in al-Fashir that was hit by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces during its takeover of the city.

“The situation was extremely difficult. I wished I could stay at the hospital, because the journey from the hospital to my house was itself a serious risk, you could be hit by a shell,” she says.

She says many of her colleagues died that way and that “a whole team was killed in the ER of the Saudi Hospital”.

“The equipment was insufficient. We cut up bedsheets [for bandages]. We worked with mosquito nets, cutting them up as well,” she says.

“Truly, we did everything we could. We were performing procedures outside the operating room, surgeries done right out in the open.”

Mother Farha Ahmed is one of an estimated 14 million people that have been displaced by the war between the RSF and the army which erupted nearly three years ago.

“After reaching Mellit, I sat in the intense heat. I had nothing to eat or anything else. We didn’t even have a change of clothes, and I had nothing for the children to eat,” she says.

“Thank God, I found Dr Ikhlas. She came to me and asked, ‘What is wrong, my sister? Don’t you have a place to stay? I told her everything – that I truly had nothing.”

Aid agencies say Sudan is the largest humanitarian crisis ever recorded.

More than 40,000 people have died in the conflict, according to UN figures, but aid groups say the true number could be many times higher.

The UN estimates that nearly 34 million Sudanese will need aid this year, with more than 20 million requiring health assistance and 21 million facing acute food insecurity.