Sudan: MSF’s return a help to city with high health needs

Like many health facilities in Khartoum and across Sudan, Bashair stopped functioning when war broke out in April 2023. Medics and volunteers reopened the hospital a few weeks later. An MSF surgical and medical team joined them on 9 May 2023, enabling the hospital to provide surgery alongside emergency medical care. In the first five weeks, more than 1,000 patients, 90 per cent with trauma-related injuries, were admitted to the emergency room.

MSF teams worked alongside the medics and volunteers for 20 months, providing essential, lifesaving healthcare to the desperately ill and injured. In August 2023, for example, the teams treated more than 200 war-wounded people over two days after bombings nearby. When the maternity department reopened the following month, 40 babies were delivered in the first two weeks, including seven by caesarean section.

But MSF suspended activities several times. In 2023, a ban on the transport of surgical supplies to Khartoum stopped all surgical activities, including caesarean sections and trauma care, for several months. In November and December 2024, violent incidents, including the killing of a patient, led to a temporary suspension of activities. When armed men again entered the hospital in January 2025, MSF suspended all activities.

The situation in Khartoum is significantly calmer but many hospitals and healthcare facilities are still damaged or closed. “The war has had a devastating impact on access to care,” says Ammar.

So, MSF is providing basic healthcare through mobile clinics in central and south Khartoum and preparing to restart medical activities in other parts of the city and state. MSF also continues supporting medical activities in the country’s second largest city, Omdurman, at the Al Buluk and Al Nao Hospitals, where its team also runs a cholera treatment unit in addition to activities for improving water and sanitation services.

“The needs in Khartoum remain immense,” says Claire San Filippo, MSF emergency coordinator for Sudan. “The cholera outbreak is only one of the challenges facing people living in the city or returning to it from other parts of the country. Humanitarian assistance must be scaled up, access facilitated and medical care protected to ensure all those who need it, in Khartoum and in the rest of Sudan, can access healthcare.”