Lifesaving medical services are urgently needed in war-torn Khartoum

“Our team in Bashair Hospital have been working to ensure that the 20-bed cholera treatment unit is ready to receive patients,” said Slaymen Ammar, MSF medical coordinator for Sudan. “Training for over 60 hospital staff members has been completed and cholera-related medical supplies have arrived at the hospital."

"The war has had a devastating impact on people’s access to health care," Ammar added. "The population in many localities within the capital, including south Khartoum, still don't have the needed access to essential, lifesaving health care. Restarting and expanding critical health services in Bashair Hospital and beyond can't wait—it was needed yesterday.”

Boosting surgical and emergency care

Like many health facilities in Khartoum and across Sudan, Bashair Teaching Hospital stopped functioning when war first broke out in April 2023. A few weeks later, medics and volunteers reopened it to ensure the community could still access health care at a time of rapidly growing needs. An MSF surgical and medical team joined them on May 9, 2023, enabling the hospital to provide surgery alongside emergency medical care. In the first five weeks of working there, the emergency room saw more than 1,000 patients, including over 900 with trauma-related injuries.

For 20 months, MSF teams worked alongside volunteers and medical staff to provide health care to people trapped in the violence and devastation of south Khartoum. During this time, we continuously saw desperately injured and ill patients flocking to the hospital, demonstrating the significant needs in this part of Khartoum. In August 2023, for example, MSF and the Bashair Hospital team treated more than 200 people within two days amid successive mass influxes of patients wounded by nearby bombings. When the maternity department reopened the following month, 40 babies were delivered in the first two weeks, including seven born by cesarean section. 

Barriers to delivering health care amid war

Over the past two years of war, MSF has had to suspend activities several times. In 2023, a ban on the transport of surgical supplies to Khartoum forced a stop to all surgical activities—including cesarean sections and trauma care—for several months. In November and December 2024, violent incidents, including the killing of a patient in the hospital, led MSF to temporarily suspend activities. When armed men again entered the hospital in January 2025, MSF made the difficult decision to suspend all activity at the hospital.

The situation in Khartoum is significantly calmer now, but the war has left many hospitals and health care facilities damaged or closed, and none fully functional.

In addition to restarting work at Bashair Hospital, MSF is supporting primary health care through mobile clinics in central and south Khartoum and is preparing to restart other medical activities in various parts of the city and state. MSF also continues to support medical activities in Omdurman, at Al Buluk Hospital, and Al Nao Hospital, where the team also runs a cholera treatment unit, in addition to working to improve water and sanitation services in the area.

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