Cholera outbreak in Sudan kills 172 in one week

A cholera outbreak has killed over 170 people across Sudan in one week, health authorities said Tuesday, amid a collapse of basic infrastructure after over two years of brutal war.

In a statement, Sudan’s health ministry reported more than 2,700 infections and 172 deaths within one week, with 90 percent of cases concentrated in Khartoum state.

In recent weeks, the capital’s water and electricity supply has been severely disrupted by drone strikes blamed on the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), at war with the army since April 2023.

Cases were also reported in the country’s south, centre and north.

Cholera is endemic to Sudan, but outbreaks have become far worse and more frequent since the war broke out, wrecking already fragile water, sanitation and health infrastructure.

Last Tuesday, the ministry said 51 people had died of cholera out of more than 2,300 reported cases over the past three weeks, 90 percent of them in Khartoum state.

The RSF this month launched drone strikes across Khartoum, including on three power stations, before being completely pushed out of their last holdout positions in the capital last week.

The strikes knocked the electricity and subsequently the local water network out of service, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF), forcing residents to turn to unsafe water sources.

“Water treatment stations no longer have electricity and cannot provide clean water from the Nile,” Slaymen Ammar, MSF’s medical coordinator in Khartoum, said in a statement.

Bashir Mohamed, a resident of Omdurman, part of greater Khartoum, told AFP his family has been without electricity for nearly two weeks.

“We now fetch water directly from the Nile, buying it from donkey carts that bring it in barrels,” he said.

– Lying on hospital floors –

According to a doctor at Omdurman’s Al-Nao hospital, the capital’s main functioning health facility, residents have resorted to “drinking untreated Nile water, after the shutdown of water pumping stations”, which he said “is the main reason for the rapid spread” of cholera.

Medics in the already overwhelmed hospital are struggling to keep pace with the outbreak, and the local emergency response room (ERR) has issued a call for more volunteers.

“The number of patients exceeds the hospital’s capacity,” a member of the ERR told AFP, requesting anonymity for their safety.

“There are not enough medical staff. Some patients are lying on the floors in hospital corridors,” he added.

Cholera, an acute diarrhoeal illness caused by ingesting contaminated water or food, can kill within hours if untreated.

Yet it is easily preventable and treatable when clean water, sanitation and timely medical care are available.

Sudan’s already fragile healthcare system has been pushed to “breaking point” by the war, according to the World Health Organization.

Up to 90 percent of the country’s hospitals have at some point been forced to close because of the fighting, according to the doctors’ union, with health facilities regularly stormed, bombed and looted.

The war, now in its third year, has killed tens of thousands, displaced 13 million and created the world’s largest displacement and hunger crisis.