Sudan: Healthcare needs high in Khartoum, scale-up urgently needed
MSF resumes medical care in Bashair Hospital amid rising cholera cases
Exactly two years after MSF first worked in south Khartoum’s Bashair Teaching Hospital, the team is again scaling up activities to help meet immense medical needs in partnership with the Ministry of Health. MSF suspended activities at the hospital in January 2025 after repeated violent incidents. MSF’s initial focus will be the very worrying and growing cholera outbreak.
“Our team in Bashair Hospital has been working to ensure that the 20-bed cholera treatment unit is ready to receive patients. 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 healthcare. Communities in many localities within the capital, including as South Khartoum, still don’t have the needed access to essential, life-saving healthcare. Restarting and expanding critical health services in Bashair Hospital and beyond can’t wait – it was needed yesterday,” said Slaymen Ammar, MSF medical coordinator in Sudan.
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, the staff reopened it to ensure the community could still access healthcare. 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, over 900 of them with trauma-related injuries.
For 20 months, MSF teams worked alongside volunteers and medical staff to provide healthcare 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 in two days in successive mass influxes of wounded after bombings nearby. When the maternity department reopened the following month, 40 babies were delivered in the first two weeks, including seven c-sections.
“The needs in Khartoum remain immense. The current cholera outbreak is only one of the challenges facing people still living in Khartoum or returning from other parts of the country.”
Claire San Filippo, MSF emergency coordinator in Sudan
Over the past two years, 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 c-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 suspend temporarily. 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 many hospitals and healthcare facilities have been damaged or closed because of the war and are not fully functional. In addition to restarting work in 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 hospitals, where the team also runs a cholera treatment unit, in addition to other activities aiming to improve water and sanitation services in the area.
“The needs in Khartoum remain immense. 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 those who need it, in Khartoum and in the rest of Sudan, can access healthcare,” says Claire San Filippo, MSF emergency coordinator for Sudan.
