The plane, which is also carrying humanitarian personnel, took off from Amman, Jordan, and landed in Port Sudan, a coastal city 850 km east of Khartoum.
On board the plane which landed in Port Sudan on Sunday 30 April are “eight tons” help, including “anesthetics, dressings, suture materials and other surgical items”, Thus than humanitarian personnel. Chartered by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), it is the first humanitarian plane to reach Sudan after the airspace was closed on April 15 due to heavy fighting between the two rival generals.
According to the regional director for Africa of the international organization based in Geneva, Patrick Youssef, this aid should allow “to treat 1,500 patients.” “We now hope to be able to deliver it quickly to the largest hospitals in Khartoum,” he added. Because, to bring relief, “we need more security guarantees in Khartoum and Darfur”, where most of the fighting takes place.
“The ICRC is preparing to charter a second plane to deliver more medical supplies and humanitarian personnel”, added Patrick Youssel, expressing the hope that “This will pave the way for humanitarians to help resolve the crisis,” alongside the Sudanese Red Crescent doctors on site.
Displaced population and bombed hospitals
In Darfur, the situation is “very difficult”. “People are moving, normally we would follow them, but in the current situation, it’s impossible”, alerted the manager. And in Karthoum, the capital, “the situation is catastrophic due to the lack of doctors and the lack of medical equipment”he said, while only 16% of hospitals are functioning, according to the UN. “In normal times, a hospital must be replenished every two days, in times of war, especially if as at the moment hospitals are looted and attacked, this period becomes shorter”continued Patrick Youssef.
For doctors in Sudan, it is above all necessary to restore water and electricity and to get out the fighters who occupy certain establishments. Alternative solutions are also needed for the 15 bombed hospitals and teams to take over from doctors who sometimes have not stopped working for two weeks. It is also necessary, warn the doctors, to find the resources to take care of “12,000 patients” who, without dialysis in hospitals where stocks are empty and generators run out of fuel, “are at risk of dying”.
Since April 15, 528 people have been killed and more than 4,000 injured, according to Sudan’s health ministry. But this assessment remains very provisional.