Khartoum/Paris, 21 July 2023
By Omboki Monayo
An MSF convoy was stopped on the afternoon of July 20 by a group of armed men while transporting medical supplies to the Turkish Hospital in southern Khartoum. The team was comprised of four MSF staff, four truck drivers and a team of 10 daily workers.
“After arguing about the reasons for MSF’s presence, the armed men then aggressively assaulted our team, physically beating and whipping them, as well as detaining the driver of one of our vehicles,” Christophe Garnier, MSF’s emergencies manager for Sudan, told sasanews.org.
“The armed men threatened the driver’s life before releasing him. They then stole the vehicle,” Garnier added.
In the wake of this horrific incident, MSF is warning that the organisation’s activities in this hospital are now in serious jeopardy and will not be able to continue if minimum safety guarantees are not met.
“In order to save people’s lives, the lives of our staff who are there to carry out this lifesaving work must not be put at risk. If an incident like this happens again, and if our ability to move supplies continues to be obstructed, then, regrettably, our presence in the Turkish Hospital will soon become untenable”, says Mr Garnier.
The Turkish Hospital is one of only two hospitals that are still operational in the whole of southern Khartoum. Both facilities are supported by MSF, which is one of only a few international medical humanitarian organisations that are
still present in the city.
Since the escalation of the current crisis in Sudan, MSF has been actively working in the 12 states of Khartoum, Kassala, Al-Jazeera, West Darfur, North Darfur, Central Darfur, South Darfur, Red Sea, El-Gedaref, Blue Nile, River Nile, and White Nile States.
Since the onset of the fighting, the MSF-supported hospital in El Fasher, North Darfur, carried out over 600 surgeries for war-wounded people, or women requiring emergency obstetric care. Among other activities, MSF provides paediatric, malnutrition and maternal health services, runs mobile clinics and provides medical and water and sanitation services to displaced people.
“Despite working in 11 states, the scale of our activities in Sudan is in no way commensurate with the huge needs faced by the people,” Mr Garnier reveals.
“We have striven to increase our activities but these attempts have been consistently hindered by both warring parties, despite their many public commitments to the facilitation of humanitarian assistance, including those formally set out in the Jeddah Declaration of Commitment to Protect the Civilians of Sudan,” he adds.
MSF also supports hospitals in east Khartoum and Omdurman in addition to south Khartoum. In this region, it helps the Ministry of Health keep the hugely fragile health system afloat, but the aftermath of yesterday’s incident – and the series of incidents that have preceded it – is pushing the non-profit organisation to think that its ongoing support program may soon no longer be possible.
This incident happened just 700 metres away from the Turkish Hospital, where hundreds of patients including children are currently undergoing treatment.
According to Mr. Garnier, the health facility has just admitted a fresh batch of patients in need of restorative health care after a bombing incident.
“Only yesterday we received 44 patients who were wounded in an airstrike. Three and a half weeks ago, we received another mass influx of war-wounded people – mainly women and children – who were injured following the escalation of fighting around the Central Reserve Police headquarters,” he said.
On a daily basis, this hospital receives around 15 war wounded patients. It also carries out lifesaving surgery and keeps patients with chronic diseases alive. Our teams work around the clock under intense conditions to treat all those who need medical care, but are now unfortunate targets of violence including physical attacks and abuse when they leave the hospital after work.
MSF has treated over 1,600 war-wounded patients in Khartoum since the conflict began and our intentions are to continue to do this. However, the security situation has deteriorated so dramatically over the past few weeks that our presence in the Turkish Hospital is now in question.
