(Adnkronos) – Tens of thousands of people are fleeing Sudan following the Rapid Support Forces’ attack on the Zamzam camp last April and the clashes that continue to intensify in El Fasher, Doctors Without Borders denounces in a statement.
The displaced continue to arrive in Tawila, North Darfur in extremely vulnerable conditions, overloading the emergency and nutrition services of the hospital supported by Doctors Without Borders in the city. It is estimated that tens of thousands of people now live in makeshift shelters on land that was completely uninhabited just a few weeks ago.
The Zamzam camp was classified as a famine-stricken area in August 2024 and many people were seriously injured during the latest attacks. Following the attack on the camp, MSF teams in Tawila recorded a surge in admissions to the intensive therapeutic feeding centre, which assists children under 5 with severe acute malnutrition and other pathologies. In the week following the influx, admissions increased almost tenfold: from a weekly average of 6-7 to over 60, mainly children from Zamzam, demonstrating the severe malnutrition rates in the camp, due to famine.
“In the first few days the number of patients in the hospital almost doubled. The emergency room was overflowing. At one point we had 4 patients for every bed, there was no more room. Many people had gunshot or blast wounds – we treated 779 in 3 weeks, including 138 children. 187 were serious cases,” says Tiphaine Salmon, MSF nursing coordinator, who was on duty on April 12, the day of the mass influx of wounded to Tawila. “The youngest I saw was a 7-month-old baby, hit by a bullet that entered under his chin and exited his shoulder. We also received day-old babies in a state of severe dehydration. Many children arrived alone, without parents – and many parents were desperately searching for their children.”
The number of people in need of assistance in Tawila far exceeds the response capacity and there are few humanitarian organizations present in Tawila. MSF teams have set up 2 health posts at the main arrival sites to provide water, nutritional and immediate medical support to new arrivals, as well as transferring the most critical cases to the local hospital, which MSF has been supporting since October 2024. In addition, in addition to hundreds of medical consultations every day, MSF provides 100,000 liters of drinking water daily, has donated dry food to community kitchens for the preparation of over 16,000 meals a day and has built 300 latrines. Despite this, the needs are immense and far exceed MSF’s response capacity.
“There is no food here. Some Tawila residents gave us some millet flour. We have survived like this so far: by begging. We get the water from a tank, but they only allow us to fill one tank per family, and there are 20 of us. We only have one blanket for everyone,” says Mariam, 40, who arrived in Tawila 3 days after the attack on the camp with her mother, sisters and children. “Even before the attack, people were dying of thirst and hunger because of the siege imposed on Zamzam for over a year. Everything was already inaccessible and unsustainable. They arrived in Zamzam with machine guns. They attacked and killed people, even children. They burned our house, with everything we had inside. They raped the women. They killed, looted…”.
To make matters worse, a suspected measles outbreak hit Tawila in March. Since the beginning of February, MSF has treated over 900 suspected cases, of which more than 300 required hospitalization. For this reason, in the first week of April, MSF teams launched a large-scale vaccination campaign, reaching 18,000 children under the age of 5. However, just a week after the mass arrival from Zamzam, new suspected cases were identified among newly arrived children. Malnutrition and measles are a lethal combination for young children, and can have devastating consequences especially in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions.
Despite the commitment of other actors and an initial mass food distribution, the humanitarian response must be urgently strengthened and expanded. MSF calls on UN agencies to significantly increase their presence on the ground, to coordinate an adequate response to the ever-increasing needs of the population.
