Supplies running out at Sudan’s remaining hospitals as healthcare disaster looms

A crowded ward at a hospital in El Fasher, in North Darfur. Sick people and expectant mothers mingle with casualties from the fighting. Photograph: Ali Shukur/Médecins sans Frontières (MSF)/AFP/Getty Images

Until gunfire broke out on the streets of El Fasher this month, the state capital of North Darfur had several main hospitals. There was the big teaching hospital, the Saudi hospital, a paediatric hospital and the South hospital, a modest 35-bed facility with big ambitions and a specific remit: to help bring down the high numbers of local women dying in pregnancy and childbirth.

Now, almost two weeks into the conflict between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), two weeks of bloodshed that has seen terror return to a region once synonymous with human suffering, those options have narrowed.