WHO fears more deaths in Sudan due to outbreaks, collapse of services
The World Health Organization (WHO) expects more deaths to occur in Sudan due to outbreaks of disease and a lack of essential services amid intense fighting, its director general said on Wednesday.
Fighting erupted between the Sudanese armed forces and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitaries on April 15 and has killed at least 459 people and injured more than 4,000, according to the WHO's latest figures. Clashes have eroded a three-day truce, due to end late on Thursday.
"On top of the number of deaths and injuries caused by the conflict itself, the WHO expects there will be many more deaths due to outbreaks, lack of access to food and water and disruptions to essential health services, including immunization," WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
Tedros added only 16% of health facilities were functioning in the Sudanese capital.
"WHO estimates that one quarter of the lives lost so far could have been saved with access to basic hemorrhage control. But paramedics, nurses, and doctors are unable to access injured civilians, and civilians are unable to access services."
WHO said it was carrying out a risk assessment to determine whether the seizure of a laboratory in Khartoum housing pathogens represented a risk to public health.
"When lab workers are forced to leave a laboratory and untrained people enter that laboratory, there are always risks, but the risks are primarily to those individuals first and foremost to accidentally expose themselves to the pathogens," said Mike Ryan, head of WHO's Health Emergencies Programme.
Ryan, however, stressed the absence of clean water and vaccines, as well as other sanitation issues, represented the main risk to population's health during the conflict.
"There's ongoing war, and the denial of public health services to that population is what represents the major risk to health and the major risk of infectious diseases," he said.
(Source: Reuters)
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