Agence France-Presse :
On Wednesday, Doctors Without Borders appealed to the Sudanese authorities to grant visas to foreigners working in them, in order to continue providing support to one of the last operating hospitals in Sudan, where the war has left three-quarters of health institutions out of service.
The organization said that it “has been waiting for more than eight weeks for visas for surgeons, nurses, and workers in other specialties.”
Since its outbreak in Sudan 16 weeks ago, the war has killed nearly 4,000 people and displaced more than three million people inside and outside the country.
“The visas of many of the health service providers” helping the Turkish hospital in Khartoum “are about to expire, which means they have to leave the country,” said Claire Nicollet, MSF relief officer.
And she continued, “We have a team ready to travel to replace them, but it did not do so because there are no visas.”
Doctors Without Borders says that between mid-June and the end of July, it treated 3,800 patients, including more than 200 children, in the Turkish hospital, which is an important service in Sudan, one of the poorest countries in the world, which has become chaotic since the outbreak of war.
There are thousands of corpses in the streets – which prevents the victims from being properly counted and constitutes a health hazard – and there does not appear to be any front line between the two parties, which daily bombard residential areas and fighters’ camps indiscriminately.
Since the outbreak of the war on April 15, humanitarian relief organizations have complained of their inability to reach people to help them and accuse the Sudanese bureaucracy of obstructing their movement.
MSF explains that it is no longer possible to obtain visas except in Port Sudan (on the Red Sea in the east), a city that has not been reached by the fighting, but is often inaccessible from the battle zones in Khartoum and Darfur, where the Sudanese need the help of aid organizations.
The health situation in the country is deteriorating day by day. In addition to the war, the 48 million Sudanese now have to deal with hunger and floods, which bring with them epidemics from malaria to cholera.
The International Health Organization states that “more than 40% of the population suffers from hunger, double the number of last year,” in addition to “lack of medicines, sanitary equipment, electricity, and water.”
The head of the United Nations Humanitarian Mission in Sudan, Clementine Nkota Salami, warned of the fate of millions of refugees in Sudan.
“They should be able to escape the battles safely,” she said.
According to the Sudanese Refugee Organization, 600 refugees from Eritrea, 300 from Ethiopia and 200 from the Democratic Republic of the Congo were deported by trucks from Khartoum to Gedaref (south).