A cholera outbreak in Sudan has killed 120 people, with another 1,102 suspected cases since May in isolated war zones, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.
More than three years of war between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have decimated the country’s healthcare system.
This is Sudan’s third wave of cholera in as many years, and began only two months after the last outbreak was declared over in March.
Between July 2024 and March 2026, over 124,400 people were infected and 3,500 killed during the last wave, according to government figures.
Endemic to the northeast African country, cholera used to come “in a cyclic manner every three years”, the WHO’s Sudan chief Dr Shible Sahbani told reporters.
But now the country faces near-continuous outbreaks “due to the conflict, constraints in access and limited supplies,” he said.
Sudan’s rainy season is set to surge in the coming weeks, during which cholera cases balloon as millions lack access to clean water and the rains further impede access.
The Sudanese government declared the latest outbreak this week in the flashpoint West Kordofan state, the dividing line between army and paramilitary zones of control.
Constant deadly drone strikes launched by both sides have made commercial and aid access to the Kordofan region increasingly dangerous, and brought hundreds of thousands to the brink of starvation.
The WHO said the outbreak appears to be spreading, following reports of close to 300 suspected cases and three deaths in neighbouring North Kordofan, where the United Nations has warned the RSF is preparing to mount a deadly ground assault on state capital El-Obeid.
Drone strikes on the city’s power stations are already “disrupting access to lifesaving drinking water and electricity”, UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said Tuesday, warning of the risk of mass atrocities.
Three years into the war, which aid groups estimate may have killed more than 200,000 people, nearly all of the country’s hospitals have been forced entirely or partially out of service.
“Forty percent of health facilities are non-functional at all, and the remaining almost 60 percent are only partially functioning, meaning they are providing only a few services, or not enough to patients in the area,” Sahbani said.
AFP
