Sudan: first humanitarian aid plane lands

Fighting in Sudan between the army and paramilitaries has claimed more than 500 lives and 4,000 injured, and most hospitals are out of service because of these clashes. For the first time, a humanitarian plane with “eight tons” of aid landed in Sudan. It took off from Amman in Jordan and landed in Port Sudan, a coastal city 850 kilometers east of Khartoum where the fighting is concentrated.

On board are humanitarian personnel, as well as, according to the ICRC, “anesthetics, dressings, sutures and other surgical supplies.” This supply should be able to treat about 1500 patients. But above all, the ICRC hopes to be able to quickly bring in the largest hospitals in Khartoum, where the situation is most dramatic. But, according to the ICRC, to help “we need more security guarantees in Khartoum and Darfur.” In Darfur, the situation is “very difficult” due to population displacement. “In normal times we would follow them, but in the current situation this is not possible,” adds the ICRC.

In the meantime, there is an urgent need for doctors in Sudan to restore water and electricity and to withdraw combatants occupying certain facilities. Alternative solutions are also needed to ensure that the 15 bombed-out hospitals and brigades are replaced by doctors who sometimes did not stop working for two weeks.

The second plane must be chartered

“In Khartoum, only 16% of hospitals are functioning. “The situation is catastrophic due to the lack of doctors and the lack of medical equipment,” the UN warns, specifying that if “in normal times the hospital must be replenished every two days, then in time of war, especially if, as in this moment of looting and attack on hospitals this period is reduced.

Another emergency is to find resources to care for the nearly “12,000 patients” who, without dialysis in hospitals where supplies are empty and generators run out of fuel, are “at risk of dying.”

According to the ICRC, a second plane should be chartered to “deliver more medical supplies and humanitarian personnel.” “We hope this will help humanitarian organizations help resolve the crisis,” concludes the organization based in Geneva, Switzerland.