Sudan's war exacerbates cancer patients' suffering

KHARTOUM, SUDAN — Fatima, a Sudanese patient with blood cancer, had traveled on a dangerous journey nationwide searching for lifesaving treatment despite the country's ongoing war.

Fatima, 43, talked at an oncology center in Port Sudan about how she had embarked on an odyssey from the southern inland state of West Kordofan all the way up to the Red Sea city and secured a place at a medical center already in great shortage of supplies and overwhelmed by patients.

"It was a frightening and arduous journey. We were exposed to stress, hunger, security risks and repeated inspections from the army and rapid support points," she said.

Due to prolonged clashes between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which began in April 2023, all health facilities in West Kordofan stopped working, while many patients died due to the lack of treatment, she noted.

Seeking medical help, Fatima took the rugged roads from Kailik city in her home state to Wad Madani, the capital city of the Gezira State in central Sudan, where she was lucky enough to be enrolled in a treatment program at the state-run Wad Madani Oncology Center, right away.

Unfortunately, the treatment went on for a couple of months until last December, when the clashes there disrupted everything.

Forced to flee

Fatima was forced to flee once again. She decided to try Port Sudan, the capital city of the Red Sea State in eastern Sudan.

"In this oncology center, I receive chemotherapy, but I still lack radiotherapy," she said.

Due to the war, Sudan has lost five radiotherapy devices that were in the capital Khartoum and Gezira State, according to Dafalla Omer Abuidris, director of Sudan's National Centers for Oncology Treatment.

"There is no radiotherapy available now in Sudan. We have one machine in Merowe Hospital in northern Sudan, providing only about 5 percent of needed radiotherapy treatment," Abuidris said.

He further noted that there is about a 40 percent shortage in Sudan's real need of chemotherapy drugs for cancer patients, appealing to countries and organizations to provide chemotherapy drugs.

Sudanese doctors warned as early as in October in the open-access medical journal Ecancermedicalscience that "the limited access to oncology services during the current war endangers the lives of more than 40,000 Sudanese cancer patients".

The WHO said in a report published on June 18 that nearly 15 million people are estimated to need urgent lifesaving healthcare services in the country, for which health cluster partners are aiming to reach 4.9 million people, requiring $178 million to do so, but which is only 26 percent funded.

The ongoing war has wreaked havoc on the country's health sector, with an estimated loss of nearly $11 billion on hospitals, health centers, and medical supplies, according to Sudan's Health Minister Haitham Mohamed Ibrahim.

Sudan has been embroiled in a deadly conflict since mid-April 2023, which has so far claimed at least 16,650 lives, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in an update last month.

More than 7.7 million people have been displaced internally within Sudan since the outbreak of the conflict, while about 2.2 million others have crossed borders into neighboring countries, according to the figures released on June 25 by the UN International Organization for Migration.

Xinhua