The ongoing war in Sudan, which started 20 months ago, has created one of the world’s most severe humanitarian crises, according to the United Nations. Over 13 million people have been displaced by the conflict, and more than half of Sudan’s 45 million population is experiencing acute malnutrition, with eight million in critical condition.
Beyond the violence, hunger stands as another devastating consequence of the conflict in Sudan, which is currently experiencing the world's most severe humanitarian crisis.
Both armies are accused of using hunger as a weapon of war and hampering the passage of humanitarian aid. The country remains largely underfunded and the crisis in Sudan has been largely forgotten.
According to RFI's reporter in Sudan, Al-Shuhada hospital in Bahri in the northern suburb of Khartoum has just been retaken from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces by the regular army .
Just a few hundred metres from the front lines, a different battle unfolds - a fight against malnutrition and hunger, which have now claimed more lives than the war itself.
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Hospitals in dire state
In front of the doors of a nutrition service, Selwa Zakaria is waiting for medical staff.
“My two daughters died of hunger," she told RFI. "The first four months ago - she was 12 years old. The second - a year-and-a-half-year old - died a week ago. We have nothing to eat.”
Fatima Haroun tends to malnourished babies, carefully weighing them one by one on the scales.
“In September alone, we recorded 20 deaths of children under [the age of] five," she told RFI.
"The day before yesterday, a baby died here, we couldn’t do anything. We are facing a Level 1 famine. But no one realises the seriousness of the cases we receive here. I received a family who, when they have nothing to eat, they have to resort to Nile silt on a plate!”
Starved-looking figures also wait in the hospital lobby. A young boy named Fayad, who is nothing but skin and bones, is taken care of by Doctor Imad.
“When I received him in the emergency room, he was dehydrated, hypotensive," the doctor told RFI. "He lacked sugar, water, everything."
The doctor asks Fayad if he can talk. The boy can't answer. His lips barely move.
Looking to flee
The Sudanese people who manage to escape the areas surrounded by fighting arrive in critical condition.
Azza Hussein has just left the Samarab neighborhood, a kilometre from the hospital.
“There was no food.The markets are empty. People are dying here and there," he told RFI.
"In our neighborhood, there have been 150 deaths in two weeks. My neighbours, for example, died of sudden dysentery, and others died because of [dirty] well water. There is also dengue fever. Burials are happening in a hurry so that the bodies do not spread diseases.”
In normal times, these diseases do not kill if they are treated, but hunger makes them scourges, according to the director of the hospital Hadil El-Hassan.
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People’s immune systems are severely weakened. Across Sudan, the war has led to the destruction or looting of factories and markets. Citizens are under siege, with no access to food.
"We can’t send food to them," El-Hassan said.
He calls for humanitarian corridors to be opened, especially to the areas controlled by the Rapid Support Forces.
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In the current chaos, precise figures are impossible to determine, he says, but the number of deaths from hunger is countless.
"They are the [collateral damage] of the war,” he adds.
The conflict has also uprooted more than eleven million people within its borders and two million refugees to neighbouring countries.
While hunger threatens to kill more than fighting, humanitarian aid remains underfunded, distributed in rare locations. Most Sudanese feel completely abandoned.
