Sudan, a country undergoing a delicate transition after toppling their long standing dictator last year, is now facing an entirely different enemy: COVID-19.
Humanitarian workers and medical personnel working in Darfur’s overpopulated camps for displaced persons have raised concerns that the coronavirus is spreading, untracked, unchecked and at an astonishing rate.
Some 1.6 million people are believed to be living in overcrowded camps. Luxuries such as social distancing are left impossible and even basic hand hygiene is beyond the realms of possibility for many.
Mohamed Hassan Adam, director of Abushouk Camp in North Darfur said:
“People in the camps are suffocating, they can’t breathe…They get exhausted then they die. There is no way to tell what happened,”
In just one corner of the Abushouk Camp, 64 people have died of “unexplained deaths” in just one month. Doctors in the regions dwindling hospitals have reported a swift increase in patients reporting coronavirus-like symptoms such as: Loss of taste, breathing troubles and fevers.
However, the official cause of these individuals’ deaths has remained “unknown”.
This has led many to be sceptical of the country’s official figures which report 7,007 coronavirus infections as of Thursday 11 June 2020, including 447 deaths. The general consensus among experts is that the real figure is much higher.
El Fasher, a university located in North Darfur, launched an investigation following a spike of 200 “mysterious” fatalities over a two week period. They concluded that around 50 could be attributed to COVID-19 with some certainty but that was still likely to be an undercount. Similar reports of unexplained deaths have also been reported by doctors in West and Central Darfur.
Like most countries who have undergone a protracted conflict, Sudan’s health system has been left in tatters. Acute shortages in protective equipment has led to nationwide strikes by medical professionals that have seen infections rise throughout their ranks.
Darfur’s 9 million people have just 600 health facilities between them, the equivalent of one per every 15,000 people. To make matters worse, these facilities are spread across an area the size of Spain.
A lack of fuel has made it increasingly difficult for doctors and patients to reach the hospitals, especially those stranded in rural areas. The drastic shortage of drugs and hard currency means that sick individuals often have to incur debt to secure their medicine.
Speaking about these struggles, Dr. Babikir El Magboul, director of the Health Ministry’s Emergency and Epidemiology Department said:
“These are the problems that Sudan faces everywhere, but in Darfur it is more severe. It’s like a separate continent.”
The authorities’ fight against the pandemic is all happening under the context of a fragile democratic transition, the culmination of last year’s protests which saw Sudan’s longtime premier Omar al-Bashir removed from power.
The country is still reeling from decisions made under al-Bashir, such as that to host Carlos the Jackal and Osama bin Laden in the early 1990s, which saw the country designated as a “State Sponsor of Terror” (SST) by the United States. Meaning, despite an entirely new government, the country still has no way of accessing the global funds it desperately needs to restart its economy and fight the virus.
In more ways than one the lingering memories of living under the al-Bashir regime is having an adverse effect on efforts to stop the contagion. Gamal Abdulkarim Abdullah, director of Zam Zam camp for the internally displaced claims residents of the camp think the virus is a conspiracy to “keep people in their homes where the old regime can come and kill them”.
Abdullah continues:
“We’re losing a whole generation”
The lack of healthcare is felt even more keenly in the camps. Some camps have reported 10 to 15 people a day dying the past week, compared to the normal rate of 5 to 10 a month.
Dr. El Magboul said:
“The sharp mortality increase in Darfur is mostly linked to COVID-19, although not purely”
He goes on to explain that the strain on the healthcare system is making it harder for people with other illnesses to get the treatment they need – this has led to deaths which would have been highly preventable under normal circumstances. A report by the Associated Press gives the example of Yousef Saleh, the 70-year-old leader of El Fasher’s Great Mosque died as a result of not being able to receive his usual diabetes care.
Sadly, the picture in Sudan is likely to be a precursor to similar situations in countries fraught with conflict, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa region. Many feel it is only a matter of time before the spread of the virus in Yemen, Syria and Libya will prove too much for countries which are already contending with so much.