Al-Yurae- Sudan’s Medical Association said Monday that dengue fever and acute diarrhoea are on the rise in Sudan, where the war has led to the closure of a hundred hospitals and called for an end to the “catastrophic spread” that has caused “hundreds of deaths.”
The Sudanese Minister of Health, Haitham Ibrahim, confirmed in an interview with Alhurra TV that “the war and the cessation of disease control operations helped in the spread of some of them in an epidemic manner,” after the Sudanese authorities announced the registration of cases of cholera, dengue and malaria in the country.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported more than 500 suspected dengue cases across the country, mostly in urban centres in Gedarif.
The WHO confirmed that 162 suspected cases of cholera have been admitted to hospitals in Gedaref state and other areas along the border with Ethiopia.
It noted that 80 cases were confirmed, while 10 people died from cholera.
Regarding the measures taken by the ministry to address the spread of these diseases, Health Minister Haitham Ibrahim said: “Usually, we expect a number of epidemics in the autumn, like the rest of the African countries present in this epidemic belt, especially fevers, such as malaria, dengue and cholera.”
This year, the ministry expected the emergence of a number of these epidemics for several reasons, most notably reports confirming an increase in the number of mosquitoes in a number of states of Sudan, he said, in addition to the fact that the war affected the ministry’s routine operations related to mosquito control, environmental health and others.
For its part, the Sudanese Medical Syndicate explained that the incidence of dengue fever has worsened to the point that investigating the number of infected people is difficult.
The syndicate pointed out that hospitals in eastern Sudan are overcrowded with patients, stressing that they receive steady numbers of new patients around the clock.
