At the start of the war in Khartoum, Esraa Hesbarassoul had to panicked out her premature twins from an incubator because the hospital where they were was bombed. Without oxygen and without an ambulance, one of the two died. Today, the young mother has managed to reach the small maternity hospital in Omdurman, a twin city of Khartoum, where she watches over her last child.
When the first bombs fell on the hospital on April 20, “we were told that everyone had to be evacuated immediately and that we had to take our twins,” the Sudanese woman, draped in a large variegated sail. “There was no ambulance available, so we had to transport them however we could, but one of them died from lack of oxygen,” she continued.
Esraa Hesbarassoul is far from the only mother trapped by the war that began on April 15: according to the UN, “24,000 women are due to give birth in the coming weeks” in Khartoum. According to the same source, 219,000 women are currently expecting a child in the capital of Sudan where more than 5 million inhabitants survive without running water or electricity and on rationing the little food they have left.
It is for them that the small four-storey Al-Nada hospital remains open against all odds. And above all, thanks to a generous donation from the Sudanese-American Doctors Association (SAPA), its director Mohammed Fatharrahmane explains to AFP, stethoscope around his neck and glasses on his nose.
500 births since the start of the war
With this money, which arrived through the channels of solidarity woven by the diaspora in a country cut off from the global banking system under the embargo of the 1990s and 2000s, “we were able to take care of 500 births – naturally and by Caesarean section – and admit 80 children” to pediatrics since the war began, he said.
Around him, premature babies in incubators cling to life and young children cry as doctors give them an injection. In rooms lit by dim neon lights, ceiling fans try to drive out the heat that is already over 40 degrees outside. From time to time, the sound of fighting and explosions echo in the distance.
While the war has killed some 700 people and injured 5,000 others, the medical effort is focused on the war wounded. The few hospitals that have not been bombed or occupied by fighters now only manage vital emergencies. “There have been no obstetrics and pediatrics services since the start of the conflict,” says Dr. Fatharrahmane.
Fatima and her husband Jaber thus found the door closed in many hospitals and clinics before meeting Doctor Fatharrahmane. He has since been treating their son with meningitis. Already before the war broke out between soldiers and paramilitaries, the lives of mothers and their newborns were in danger in Sudan.
Replenish medications
In this country, one of the poorest in the world, 3 out of 1,000 women die in childbirth, eight times more than in neighboring Egypt, for example. Out of 1,000 children, 56 will die before reaching the age of 5, compared to 19 in Egypt. And to find a medical facility, one in three Sudanese has to walk for more than an hour. If he succeeds, only 30% of the essential drugs will be available to treat him.
Today, the small Al-Nada team also fears that it will soon be forced to stop everything. “Our drug stocks are starting to run out. If it continues like this, everything will collapse, “says the maternity pharmacist, Alaa Ahmed, flowery dress and beige scarf.
Restocking on medicines or infant milk at the central warehouses of the Ministry of Health is out of the question: they are on the other side of the Nile, in one of the districts adjoining that of the airport where the fighting is raging. The paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces “prevent everyone from accessing it”, accuses the army. As a result, Alaa Ahmed laments, “a lot of people ask me for medicine but, unfortunately, I can’t give it to them.”