Challenges and Crisis in Sudan: Displaced Families Struggle for Survival

2023-06-22 22:06:15

Fatima Muhammad survived the war in Khartoum, but she died 10 days ago, following the disease took hold of her in a shelter for the displaced from the Sudanese capital.

Since her death, her three children (Ethar – 11 years old), (Dalal – nine years old), and (Ibrahim – seven years old) have been living in the yard of Al-Jili Salah School, which was opened to receive the displaced in the city of Wad Medani, 200 kilometers south of Khartoum.

However, the place began to become crowded with the displaced, as tens of thousands of people fled Khartoum to escape the war that broke out on April 15, to this city that has not yet been affected by battles.

Sakina Abdul Rahim, for example, lives with six family members in a dormitory room for female students at the University of Gezira in eastern Wad Medani.

She says: «For us as a family, housing is uncomfortable, there is no privacy, and the place is crowded. We are a family of seven people, we live in a room of three meters, and the bathrooms are shared with the residents of the floor, which includes 20 rooms, and each room contains a full family.

Thousands of displaced people reside in Wad Madani in the city’s university student housing, in schools, or in the headquarters of non-governmental associations that have been transferred to receive them.

malaria

Access to basic services is not always guaranteed in these modest places in the city, located in Gezira State, which is famous for its fertile lands located between the White Nile and the Blue Nile.

Hanan Adam, who lives in the same shelter with her husband and four children, complains regarding “the water being cut off from the center for long hours, as well as the electricity.” “With the rising temperatures and the spread of mosquitoes, all my children contracted malaria,” she added to AFP.

Malaria claims many lives annually in Sudan, and the World Health Organization indicates that 61% of malaria deaths in the eastern Mediterranean region are recorded in this country.

A doctor and 4 nurses

In one of the city’s shelters, the non-governmental organization “Doctors Without Borders” managed to send one doctor and four nurses to care for the 2,000 displaced people residing in that center.

Humanitarian organizations constantly stress their inability to provide the necessary assistance to the displaced, especially since their foreign workers are still waiting to obtain an entry visa, while the local workers themselves are suffering from the war, and were forced to either flee, or hide in their homes for fear of battles…or they are completely exhausted.

baby milk

Sumaya Omar, a mother of five children, the eldest of whom is 10 and the youngest of whom is six months old, says: “We receive the food ration, but we do not find infant formula in it, and we do not have money to buy it.”

A medical source working in the city’s 13 shelters said, “There have been cases of malnutrition among children.”

At Abdullah Musa School in western Wad Medani, the parents are in charge of providing food for the displaced.

Volunteers from the city’s youth distribute meals, which are prepared in a kitchen initiated by the city’s residents to help those fleeing the war.

Saniya Awad, who lives in a shelter with her four family members, said: “The conditions are very difficult. Sometimes the meal that is distributed is not suitable for my children, but we have no other choice.”

UNICEF says: “620,000 Sudanese children suffer from acute malnutrition, and half of them might die if aid is not provided to them.”

However, UN agencies and non-governmental organizations do not have sufficient funds to cover these needs, nor can they transport aid to different parts of Sudan, because their trucks are caught in the crossfire between the army forces led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.

Domestic production is shrinking sharply, and the food industry, which collapsed under a 20-year international embargo under former President Omar al-Bashir, who was overthrown by a popular uprising in 2019, is being bombed, as are homes and hospitals.

A month ago, the Samil Factory, which was producing, according to UNICEF, 60% of the nutritional remedies for children suffering from acute malnutrition, was burned down in Khartoum.

UN agencies and NGOs do not have enough funding to cover the needs, nor can they transport aid to different parts of Sudan, because their trucks are caught in the crossfire between the army and the Rapid Support Forces.

Malaria claims many lives annually in Sudan, and the World Health Organization indicates that 61% of malaria deaths in the Eastern Mediterranean region are recorded in this country.

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