Sudan Hospitals Desperately Struggling with Fatalities and Destruction Caused by Fighting

At Khartoum Teaching Hospital, a lot of people were hurt in the street fighting and there weren’t enough supplies for them. Because of this, both the doctors, nurses, patients and their families had to stay put in the hospital even though those streets outside were dangerous. On Monday morning, something terrible happened: one of the wards was badly damaged by bomb blasts!

Dr. Amin Saad said to Big Big News, “We have almost nothing left and we are struggeling to do our jobs with limited resources. Everyone is super tired, but unfortunately we don’t have enough doctors to help out.”

Soon after, the hospital closed completely. People like staff, patients and their family members were stuck inside while wars erupted outside around them. This was one out of a total of 12 hospitals in the same city that had to shut down because they got destroyed by the fighting, people could not access it due to all the fighting going on or simply ran out of fuel. This was according to what the Doctors’ Syndicate reported.

The fighting between Sudan’s two high-ranking generals has caused a lot of commotion in Khartoum’s hospitals. People have been stuck in their houses since Saturday because the two sides were shooting and bombing each other. According to United Nations envoy Volker Perthes, over 180 people have died and around 1,800 injured from this conflict.

In the capital city and the nearby town of Omdurman there are almost twenty hospitals. Sadly, these hospitals have been having a lot of problems as they lack staff and resources, and do not have any power or water in many cases.

The constant fighting has made it harder to operate these clinics because doctors and nurses were stuck inside them, and other hospital workers couldn’t even reach their workplaces.

Dr. Sara Mohi said she had been trying to reach her hospital in central Khartoum for two days, but she had to go back home each time due to the battles happening there. Atiya Abdulla Atiya from Doctors’ Syndicate said the situation was really bad. The World Health Organization also reported that hospitals in Khartoum have run out of important stuff like blood, medical equipment, fluids and other things needed to keep people alive.

If you press the “shift” and “question mark” buttons at the same time, it will show a list of keyboard shortcuts. The Al-Shaab Teaching Hospital, along with the Khartoum Teaching Hospital, had to close on Monday because a section of it was hit by fighting said its general manager, Al Nameir Gibril Ibrahim.

On Monday, a video shared online showed people evacuating patients from Al-Shaheed Salma kidney treatment clinic while they heard gunfire. They quickly ran across the street with an injured person on a gurney. The day before, workers at the Police Hospital had also been evacuated.

Dr. Ossama al-Shazly, who is the leader of a hospital in Khartoum’s northern Bahri district, asked for help on social media late Sunday. He explained that they needed fuel to keep the generators working after their power was cut off. Dr. Al-Shazly added that many patients required surgeries and others were in serious care units so there wasn’t any other place for them to go to.