Only five out of 59 hospitals are functioning in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, as fighting between rival military factions rages for a fifth day, a senior doctor has told the BBC.
Dr Ahmed Abbas, a co-ordinator for the Sudan Doctors’ Union, said that the health system in the city – home to about 10 million people -was “beyond collapse”.
The five hospitals that were still open were facing major shortages – running short of oxygen and life-saving drugs, he said. Meanwhile medical staff were tired from “working around the clock”.
“Some of them are extremely exhausted, to the point of collapse because other staff can’t get to the hospitals because the bridges are blocked and the streets are unsafe for transportation,” Dr Abbas told BBC Newshour presenter James Menendez.
This meant that people were dying unnecessarily – sometimes because of a lack of blood or intravenous fluids, he said.
“Some of them are dying because of the long wait to get into the operating rooms or even to the wards.
“Somebody rang me earlier on to say a pregnant woman is in difficult labour, but she cannot get into any hospitals for an emergency Caesarean.”
He described how one hospital he has been working at lacked electricity as generators had run out of fuel and the water supply had been cut, adding: “The situation is very bleak, it’s very distressing, it’s very upsetting.”
During the fighting that erupted on Saturday, five major hospitals in Khartoum had been “completely destroyed”, he added.
Other hospitals had been taken over by the warring parties – either to use as refuge for their fighters or as bases to launch their military operations, Dr Abbas said.
“Both sides are incriminated in this inhumane behaviour and inhumane war,” he said, appealing for the UN to intervene and organise a ceasefire.
