Geneva — Three years of war in Sudan have shattered essential services like water and health, and plunged the country into the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, the country’s World Health Organisation (WHO) representative says.
“Now, 41 percent of Sudan’s population – 21 million people – still require urgent health assistance for survival,” Dr Shible Sahbani, WHO Representative in Sudan, said at an April 10 UN press conference in Geneva, speaking by phone.
“Despite recent returns, 13.6 million people still remain displaced within Sudan or in neighbouring countries,” said. Sahbani, who returned recently from Khartoum on an official visit.
With a land mass of 2.376 million square kilometres, Sudan is Africa’s third biggest country in area.
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The continuing armed conflict began on April 15, 2023, between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, with other warring parties involved, according to the United Nations.
“In the three years of war, WHO has verified 217 attacks on health care with 2,052 deaths and 810 injuries,” said the WHO doctor, who is from Morocco.
Of the attacks, 16 took place in the past 3 months, leading to 194 deaths and 320 injuries.
Hospitals overflowing with patients
Sahbani said hospitals are overflowing with patients yet operating at less-than-optimal capacity; once-overflowing medical warehouses have been ruined and left as skeletal structures.
While fighting has subsided in Khartoum and Al Jazirah, it has intensified around Darfur and Kordofan.
There, the population faces high protection risks and extreme limitations of access to basic services, mainly health care, according to the WHO.
Since 2025, there has been an increase in the frequency and deadliness of attacks.
The WHO doctor said that among the casualties of the attack was a woman in labour, killed when the ambulance transporting her to the hospital was hit; a doctor was killed while making rounds in a paediatric ward.
He also cited a scrub nurse who was killed assisting in a caesarean section, a mother injured while on the operating table for a caesarean delivery and children who were killed within the walls of a hospital.
“Disease outbreaks are widespread. Malaria, dengue, measles, polio, hepatitis E, and diphtheria are reported from several states,” said Sahbani.
Since April 2023, the WHO has maintained continuity of health services in Sudan, with more than 4.1 million people treated in hospitals, primary health care facilities, and mobile clinics.
24.5 million cholera vaccines
Additionally, 24.5 million people received oral cholera vaccines; more than 13 million children received measles and rubella vaccines; over 6 million children received polio vaccines; and 2.8 million received diphtheria vaccines, according to the WHO.
A further 118,000 severely acute malnourished children with medical complications received treatment at stabilisation centres, and two cholera outbreaks were contained.
In January 2026, the United States officially withdrew from the WHO, of which it was a founding member, leaving the UN agency without one of its biggest donors, although it had not paid its fees for 2024 and 2025. It is the only country to have withdrawn from the Geneva-based WHO.
The administration U.S. President Donald Trump accused the WHO of mishandling the COVID-19 pandemic, a claim rejected by the organisation’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. The WHO said the withdrawal leaves both the United States and the world less safe.
