Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) announced on Friday the suspension of all its medical activities in the city of Wad Madani due to the deteriorating security situation there after the city was overrun by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF),and said it had evacuated its staff from the city to safer places in Sudan and neighboring countries.
The international organization, in a post on its account on the platform «X», said that it evacuated its employees from the city to safer places in Sudan and neighboring countries. The move came after gunmen attacked a compound belonging to it, looting two cars and other contents last week, it said.
🔴 Sudan:
On 19 December, armed men attacked an MSF compound, looting 2 cars & other items from our premises. Due to the security deterioration, we have suspended all medical activities in Wad Madani and evacuated our staff to safer areas of Sudan and neighbouring countries…
— MSF International (@MSF) December 29, 2023
The organization manages activities in several locations in Sudan, including Khartoum, Omdurman, White Nile, Blue Nile, Gedarif, West Darfur, North Darfur, Central Darfur and South Darfur.
Wad Madani and other towns and villages of the Aljazeera state were subjected to widespread looting, according to reports by resistance committees in the area, with continued closure of hospitals, suspension of health services and shortages of medicine and food.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) complains of restrictions on its work in Sudan. In recent months, it has cut staff in hospitals in Khartoum, with MSF warning that the lack of “essential visas” for its teams in Sudan threatens the provision of “life-saving care” in hospitals in Khartoum.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has earlier called for urgent action to address the worsening health and humanitarian crises in Sudan. The organization also called on the international community to increase financial assistance.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said urgent action was urgently needed to de-escalate the conflict in Sudan, where humanitarian and health crises are worsening as hundreds of thousands of Sudanese, mostly women and children, are displaced by intensified fighting.
The UN estimates that at least 7.1 million people have been displaced since the beginning of the ongoing conflict, 1.5 million of whom have sought refuge in neighbouring countries.
More than 12,000 people have been killed in the war, according to a conservative estimate by the NGO ACLID.
