Displaced people in Sudan’s Darfur and Kordofan face humanitarian and health catastrophe

About 6,200 children are suffering from malnutrition in Malha in North Darfur, while a cholera outbreak is causing a health crisis in Um Jak administrative area and the Hamir Um Taqola village in West Kordofan, the General Coordination of Displaced Persons and Refugee Camps and the Dar Hamar Emergency Room say.

Adam Rijal, the official spokesperson for the coordination, says in a statement on Tuesday that about 6,200 children in Malha are malnourished, including around 1,500 suffering from severe acute malnutrition. About 1,350 pregnant and breastfeeding women are also malnourished, he says.

Several diseases, including tuberculosis, anaemia, and diarrhoea, are widespread in the locality, Rijal says, while medicines are available only in very limited quantities and humanitarian organisations are completely absent from the area.

He describes the humanitarian and health situation in Malha as catastrophic and forgotten by the world, and calls on the United Nations and international organisations to break the isolation imposed on Malha, send emergency teams, and open an independent international investigation into the violations that have led to the humanitarian collapse.

In West Kordofan, the Dar Hamar Emergency Room expresses concern about the catastrophic health situation in Um Jak administrative area and Hamir Um Taqola village, in the rural El Odaya Zakaria area and neighbouring villages, following a severe cholera outbreak.

The emergency room says in a statement on Tuesday that eight people have died and 40 cases have been recorded over the past 48 hours.

A spokesperson for the emergency room told Radio Dabanga that the area has no medical staff and no life-saving medicines or intravenous fluids. There are also no health isolation centres capable of containing the outbreak, the spokesperson says.

Humanitarians step up cholera response amid conflict, rising needs

OCHA reports that despite active conflict and funding shortfalls, humanitarian organizations continue to deliver life-saving assistance across Sudan.

From January to July, the UN and humanitarian partners reached 12.3 million people across Sudan with at least one form of assistance.

However, just 2.2 million people – or 18 per cent of those reached – received assistance across multiple sectors, underscoring the impact of underfunding and other challenges on efforts to reach people with the full range of support they need.

Meanwhile, the UN and partners are stepping up efforts to tackle cholera as the rainy season continues. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over 2,600 cases had been reported by early August across multiple states, with the Kordofan region at the epicentre.

Health workers continue to provide treatment, conduct vaccination campaigns and distribute essential medical supplies. Tragically,WHO reports that a vaccinator was killed in an attack on a market in West Kordofan State on Saturday, while searching for her son among casualties from an earlier attack.

Meanwhile, humanitarians are scaling up efforts to provide clean water. In Kordofan State, a water system rehabilitated with UNICEF support in Abu Jubayhah is now providing safe water to 25,000 people every day, including 5,000 displaced people.

At the same time, insecurity continues to drive displacement, including in the Kordofan region. IOM reports that some 730 people fled several villages in Abassiya locality, South Kordofan, on Sunday. They sought safety elsewhere in Abassiya and in Um Rawaba locality in neighbouring North Kordofan.

OCHA once again calls on all parties to protect civilians, including health and humanitarian workers, and to facilitate rapid, safe, unhindered and sustained humanitarian access.

Note: This article has been translated from Arabic with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools, and subsequently reviewed and adapted by a human editor before publication.