The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has appealed for the donation of U.S.$62 million to sustain its operations in Sudan, where severe flooding has disrupted access to critical health care.

It is estimated that about 15.8 million people in the country will need humanitarian assistance in 2023, according to data from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

This figure remains the highest number in a decade with the country’s crisis further driven by conflict, escalating hunger levels, economic deterioration, disease outbreaks, and repeated climate crises.

In 2022, severe flooding affected many parts of Gedaref State, eastern Sudan, leaving about 350,000 affected with villages cut off from assistance and basic services.

Since the onset of the Ethiopian refugee emergency in Sudan, UNFPA has been providing life-saving reproductive health support to vulnerable host and refugee populations in Gedaref.

However, violence in various parts of the country is hampering humanitarian response and drastically undermining national capacities to respond to rising needs.

It is understood that the UN refugee agency collaborated with Alight to assist over 40,000 patients and ensured more than 130 safe births in six months.

‘The field hospital guarantees access to essential health services during the annual rainy season, when the whole of the Mafaza locality, where Tunaybah refugee camp is located, and parts of the neighbouring Al Fao become completely cut off from other parts of Gedaref’, UNFPA said in an update.

It was also gathered that UNFPA and partners are working with mobile clinics, midwives and health facilities across Sudan to ensure that every woman receives proper maternal health care.

Photo source: UNFPA