Sudan: Patients stranded as hospitals thrown into chaos due to fighting

Khartoum’s hospitals have been thrown into chaos by the explosion of violence between Sudan’s two top generals.

People have been unable to leave their homes since Saturday as the two sides engaged in gun battles and bombarded each other with artillery and airstrikes.

Dozens of hospitals have shuttered in Khartoum and elsewhere across Sudan due to the fighting, and dwindling medical and fuel supplies according to the Sudanese Doctors’ Syndicate.

The U.N. Population Fund has said that the fighting threatens millions including 24,000 women expected to give birth in the coming weeks

The sudden outbreak of fighting caught everyone off guard, trapping doctors and nurses inside hospitals, and preventing other staff from reaching the facilities

“I’m doing dialysis at the kidney centre, but for nine days I didn’t do it because the centre was closed. I need 90 million Sudanese pounds (40 USD) for transportation to come here. People have no money, patients who used to come with us for dialysis haven't come since last Saturday, also the chronic disease patients can't bear it. They're supposed to open the streets for people, there is no transportations or taxis that can take you to Bahari,” said Batool Shareef, a dialysis patient.

Ahmad Qassem dialysis centre is the only centre still operating with 17 dialysis machines since the fighting began.

Patients who have been unable to reach the centre and continue their dialysis treatments are risking their lives, warned kidney department director Dr. Othman Taj el-Dein.

"If they didn’t do the dialysis two or three times then the patient has an 80% chance of dying because water gets inside the lungs", Taj el-Dein said.

The humanitarian needs in Sudan were already at record levels before this recent eruption of fighting impacting some 15.8 million people — that’s about a third of the population according to the United Nations.