Doctors without Borders, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), has called for an urgent response to health care challenges in Sudan.
According to MSF, about 1.6 million residents and refugees in Jebel Aulia are currently struggling to access basic health care and adequate water and sanitation services.
Since conflict started in 2013 in Sudan, over three million people have been displaced, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Many have been forced into displacement camps where food, water, and shelter remain out of reach as tensions between warring parties escalate.
In its recent project report, MSF said it was now providing support to a clinic in the Al-Rasheed neighbourhood in the locality of Jebel Aulia, where nearly 4,000 patients have been treated since July 2022.
‘Al-Rasheed clinic was facing shortages of medications as well as issues with water and waste management’, the report quoted MSF’s Head of Mission in Sudan, Assane Compaore, as saying.
‘MSF is now supporting the Al-Rasheed clinic and providing free health care services for people of all ages and to fill the existing gaps in order to reduce illness and deaths in the community.
‘We are seeing now mostly respiratory tract infections, urinary tract infections and gastrointestinal diseases among our patients, which highlights basic health care needs in the area’.
The growing impact of the devastating climate shock adds to the myriad of factors pushing many to the edge of starvation as projections estimate that 18 million people could slip into hunger by September 2022.
Photo source: MSF