Sudan: Over 3000 people have died from cholera

More than 3000 people have died from cholera in Sudan, according to a report by Asharq Al Awsat plus agencies on October 19th.

These figures come from a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) on October 18th, which also estimates that there are a further 120,000 cases of cholera in Sudan.

The UN office said that “the lack of sustained funding threatens to undermine ongoing response efforts”, as cuts to humanitarian aid have exacerbated the crisis in Sudan, where famine was first identified in 2024. The UN’s International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) has previously warned that over 640,000 children in Sudan’s North Darfur region were at risk of cholera.

The UNOCHA issued a statement on X that said the situation in Sudan is increasingly dire due to the ongoing civil war between the Sudanese Army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). It is estimated that the conflict has destroyed 75% of the nation’s healthcare facilities.

One of the country’s worst-affected areas is El-Fasher, which is the state capital of Sudan’s North Darfur region. On October 7th, an RSF drone strike killed eight people in a maternity ward located in the city. Between October 10th and 11th, at least 110 people were killed by suspected RSF drone strikes in the city’s Daraja Oula neighbourhood; the strikes appeared to target a shelter for internally displaced persons.

In a statement released on October 12th, the UN condemned the Daraja Oula strikes as “repeated and deliberate” on Sudanese civilians.

Attacks on infrastructure, including clean water supplies, have created an environment conducive to the spread of diseases like cholera. On October 3rd, the UN’s Humanitarian Coordinator Denise Brown warned that “access to clean water is limited” and “sanitation is incredibly poor.”

Since the conflict started in April 2023, millions of Sudanese civilians have been displaced. Food shortages as a result of the RSF siege on El-Fasher led to at least 63 people dying from starvation between August 3rd and 10th.

The collapsed healthcare system has made it difficult to “trace and contain” cases of cholera, said Sophie Dresser, director of programs at Mercy Corps-Sudan.

Sudan’s Darfur region was said to be experiencing its deadliest cholera outbreak in years, according to information from Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

The disease has spread across all five states of Darfur, with South Darfur emerging as the epicentre and accounting for more than half of all recorded cases, according to the World Health Organization.

Asharq Al Awsat plus agencies, Maghrebi.org