Attacks on water treatment stations leave Khartoum without clean water, driving a deadly surge in cholera cases.
Sudan’s Ministry of Health reported on Tuesday that 172 people have died from cholera in the past week, as the war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) pushes the country’s health and water systems to collapse.
More than 2,700 cholera infections were recorded in one week, with 90 percent of cases reported in Khartoum state, where weeks of drone strikes blamed on the RSF have destroyed electricity and water infrastructure.
Cholera, an acute diarrheal disease caused by consuming contaminated water or food, is endemic in Sudan but has become far more deadly since war erupted in April 2023.
Last week, Sudan’s Health Ministry reported 51 deaths from over 2,300 cholera cases across three weeks. But the latest figures show a sharp acceleration, driven by worsening conditions in Khartoum, the center of the fighting.
In recent weeks, RSF drone strikes targeted three power stations across Khartoum, knocking out electricity and disabling local water treatment networks, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
“Water treatment stations no longer have electricity and cannot provide clean water from the Nile,” said Slaymen Ammar, MSF’s medical coordinator in Khartoum, in a statement.
Without clean water or sanitation, cholera can kill within hours. Yet the disease is easily preventable and treatable when basic health infrastructure is intact.
Sudan’s health system, already fragile before the war, has been pushed to the brink. The World Health Organization says as many as 90 percent of the country’s hospitals have been forced to shut down at some point during the conflict, as health facilities are regularly stormed, bombed, or looted.
Now in its third year, Sudan’s war has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced 13 million, and triggered the world’s largest displacement and hunger crisis.
Public health experts warn that unless urgent action is taken to restore water, sanitation, and healthcare access, the cholera outbreak could spiral further, compounding an already devastating humanitarian catastrophe.
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