Sudan’s healthcare system on brink of collapse, MSF warns

War-torn Sudan’s healthcare system is facing a deep crisis as international aid funding has dwindled, cutting millions off from essential services, Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, has warned.

The medical charity said on Tuesday that a greater number of patients are being pushed towards a shrinking number of facilities, even as certain regions have seen intensifying violence and displacement with the country’s war escalating.

It urged governments at the United Nations General Assembly, which is currently convening, to protect health funding and provide stopgap financing for facilities at risk of closing.

About 37 percent of Sudan’s health facilities are out of service and the UN’s response plan for the country is only 41 percent funded, MSF said, with some 19.5 million people facing crisis levels of hunger earlier this year.

Mohammad Ibrahim, head of MSF in Sudan, says the organisation has been overwhelmed as funding for other aid efforts disappears.

“Donors must protect essential health services and provide sustained, flexible funding to organisations that depend on it,” he says in the report.

Fabrizio Locuratolo, humanitarian affairs manager at an MSF hospital in Um Rakuba, says the cuts extend beyond healthcare.

“Food rations are shrinking and protection programmes are being dismantled, pulling away the last safety nets and leaving refugees completely exposed,” he said.

MSF linked the closures to the shutdown of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), whose Sudan grants ended in June, and a significant reduction of aid from European institutions year-over-year.

The report notes that the world is witnessing “historic international aid funding cuts by governments”, with global humanitarian aid reduced by 35.8 percent since last year.

The war between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has killed at least 59,000 people and displaced about 14 million since it erupted in April 2023.