A woman appears at the entrance to the tented cholera quarantine unit at the Kassala Teaching Hospital. He has a small child in his arms.
“Does your child have cholera?” – asks a concerned health care worker. The woman says no. “Then get away from here,” he shouts.
These are extreme conditions that require a strict tone. Sudanthe eastern states, pockets of relative safety in a war-torn country, face their own battle. Fighting the spread of life-threatening diseases such as cholera spread in unsanitary conditions made worse by heavy rains, mass displacement and crumbling infrastructure.
On the ward, health care workers quickly triage incoming patients. Most of them are too weak to walk and talk.
One of the men falls while trying to move from one room to another. He was placed in a wheelchair and moved to a room a few steps from where he fell. As soon as the attendants let him out, he falls onto the hard bed. Without support, there is no strength to sit.
“This is the first time the state has experienced something like this. At least in recent years there has been no such epidemic of cholera,” says Dr. Ali Adam, Minister of Health in Kassala, who is in the quarantine ward.
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Massacre on the streets of Sudan
He gave us rare access to the facility, despite the terrible conditions around us.
“There is enormous pressure on government services. Three million people live in Kassala and that number has almost doubled.”
Despite the desperate condition of the patients undergoing treatment, those who manage to reach this ward are the lucky ones. With rehydration therapy and monitoring, there is a good chance they will survive.
The latest data from Sudan's Federal Ministry of Health shows that the number of cholera cases is increasing. On September 26, 15,557 cases had been reported since the end of July. By yesterday, that number had risen to 24,116 reported cases, an increase of 55% in just two and a half weeks.
The number of cholera-related deaths in the same reporting window is also increasing. 681 people died, an increase of 34% from the 507 death toll.
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“They started killing people in the streets.”
Experts and emergency responders on the front lines have told us that these numbers remain gross underestimates.
Sudan's cholera epidemic is a growing, grim reality – fueled by armed violence and the continued displacement of people into densely populated safe zones.
The country is currently experiencing the world's worst internal displacement crisis.
“The main problem of cholera is overpopulation,” says Chiara Lodi, MSF Spain country director in Sudan. “Moving from one state to another affects the health care system because it cannot absorb the infrastructure – city or village – and it affects it because there is not enough room for everyone and they are not built to accommodate so many people “.
The flow of key supplies and humanitarian aid was also hampered by wartime state bureaucracy.
“If, as usual, we have to intervene within 24 hours, this is impossible because we have to follow certain procedures,” says Chiara.
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As the chaos of this conflict deepens, millions of defenseless people affected by the spread of deadly diseases are lost in the rubble.
“In an environment like this, everyone focuses and worries about a certain type of patient, and then we forget that what is happening is actually the population that is most affected by what is happening, not the people who were injured by the explosion.” – adds Chiara.
“It is children, mothers and the elderly who have to flee and find themselves with nothing in a place that is not built to cope with them, and the health care system is headed for collapse.”
