from RAJI BASHIR in Khartoum, Sudan
Sudan Bureau
KHARTOUM, (CAJ News) – PREGNANT women hardest hit by the continuing attacks on healthcare facilities in war-torn Sudan.
These attacks since the conflict began in mid-April are depriving women and girls of life-saving healthcare.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) report that some 67 percent of hospitals in areas affected by fighting are closed and several maternity hospitals are out of action, including Omdurman Hospital, the largest referral hospital in Sudan.
Among the 11 million people in Sudan who need urgent health assistance are 2,64 million women and girls of reproductive age.
Some 262 880 of them are pregnant and over 90 000 will give birth in the next three months.
All of them need access to critical reproductive health services.
Since April, when the fighting began, WHO has verified 46 attacks on health workers and facilities.
Eight people have died during these attacks and 18 injured.
Facilities and health assets have also been looted. Health workers have been subjected to violence. Armed forces are using a number of health facilities as bases.
There are reports of a military occupation of the National Medical Supply Funds (NMSF) warehouses in the capital, Khartoum, where medicines for the entire country, including malaria medicines, are kept, and where the national pharmacy for chronic diseases is located.
Hospitals are running out of fuel to power generators.
Six newborns died at a hospital in the city of Eld’aeen in East Darfur in the space of a week due to issues including a lack of oxygen amid electricity blackouts. Local doctors estimated that more than 30 newborns have died at the hospital since the start of the fighting.
WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said health workers were putting their lives at risk to provide emergency, maternity, pediatric and chronic disease treatment services.
“We call on the warring parties to honour the commitments they made in Jeddah in May, including the restoration of essential services and the withdrawal of forces from hospitals and essential public facilities,” he said.
UNFPA Executive Director Dr Natalia Kanem, concurred.
She said the conflict must stop, health facilities, health workers and patients must be protected, humanitarian and medical aid must be allowed through.
“People who need urgent healthcare should not be afraid to step out of their homes for fear of their safety, and women’s right to reproductive healthcare must be upheld, conflict or no conflict,” Kanem added.
– CAJ News