According to the UN, 30 babies have died in hospitals in Khartoum since April 15 due to lack of care.
In Sudan, the truce that came into effect on Monday May 22 is struggling to hold. The mediators of the conflict, the United States and Saudi Arabia, however requested its extension on Sunday, to facilitate the work of humanitarian workers. Violent fighting broke out this week, particularly in Darfur, between the army and the paramilitaries. In Khartoum, there were also exchanges of fire and overflights of combat aircraft. Among the victims of this conflict are pregnant women who do not have access to healthcare.
Fewer than a dozen hospitals are still operating in the capital, according to the Sudanese doctors’ union, which has set up an emergency number to guide pregnant women about to give birth. Overcrowded hospitals cannot offer pregnancy care or infant care, and women have to leave just hours after giving birth, said Dr Attia Abdullah of the Sudanese doctors’ union.
Howida Ahmed Alhassan, a gynecologist in a hospital south of Khartoum, has since the beginning of the conflict given birth to about fifty women by Caesarean section, sometimes in extremely difficult conditions. ” The problem, he said, it is electricity. On several occasions, we had to perform a caesarean using the light from our mobile phones. We don’t have enough medicine, especially painkillers, so we give women who give birth half a dose. Another time, we didn’t have an anesthesiologist because he couldn’t reach the hospital because of the shooting. »
Just arriving at the hospital can indeed be extremely dangerous: “ Next to the Saad Abu Alela hospital, there is a checkpoint and unfortunately one day a woman arrived in an ambulance because she was about to give birth, the vehicle did not stop. The soldiers fired we were able to save the baby by caesarean section, but the mother and her accompanying father died. »
Hospital staff are also targeted: 14 medical assistants have died in Khartoum since the start of the conflict.