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Food distribution in South Darfur

Conflict in Sudan

An MSF staff member speaks with mothers who have been admitted to MSF's programme for lactating and pregnant women suffering from severe malnutrition, as they wait to receive the food baskets. South Darfur, Sudan, February 2025.
© Abdoalsalam Abdallah

Last updated on 17 September 2025.

On 15 April 2023, intense fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces in Khartoum and across most of Sudan. Since then, the conflict has killed and injured thousands of people.

The war in Sudan is a war on people. Across large parts of Sudan, and especially in Darfur, people have experienced ongoing violence, including intense urban warfare, gunfire, shelling, and airstrikes. Our teams are treating patients with injuries caused by explosions, bullets, and stabbings. Healthcare workers and facilities have been attacked and looted.

Nearly 12 million people have been displaced since the conflict began, including over 4 million who have sought safety in neighbouring countries (UNHCR). Displaced people’s camps lack adequate healthcare and humanitarian aid. There are catastrophic levels of malnutrition, with over 8.7 million people facing emergency- or famine-level food insecurity (IPC). A cholera outbreak is yet another peril for the people of Sudan.

This is all taking place while the World Health Organization estimates that 70 to 80 per cent of health facilities in conflict-affected areas are non-operational. With very few international aid organisations on the ground, the humanitarian response is far from adequate. Restrictions imposed on humanitarian organisations by the Sudanese authorities further isolate people in need of assistance. 

MSF’s response in Sudan

In Sudan, MSF is present in 8 out of the 18 states in the country. Our 1,200 Sudanese staff and 180 international staff currently work in and/or support 20 hospitals and 6 basic healthcare facilities, clinics, and mobile clinic sites. 

In Sudan, MSF teams:

  • Provide emergency medical treatment, including surgeries, for war wounded and non-war related injuries.
  • Respond to disease outbreaks.
  • Provide maternal and paediatric healthcare
  • Offer water and sanitation services.
  • Donate medicines and medical supplies to healthcare facilities, and provide incentives, training, and logistical support to Ministry of Health staff.
  • Treat children and pregnant women with malnutrition both at-home and in-hospital.
  • Conduct vaccination campaigns.
  • Distribute food in camps for internally displaced people.

 

MSF emergency response in Sudan (January-July 2025)

MSF’s response in bordering countries

Chad

Over 800,000 refugees and returnees have crossed the border from Sudan to Chad, according to UNHCR. People are living in camps in Chad and are facing difficulties securing even their most basic needs. With a lack of water, food, proper shelter, and healthcare people are suffering from diarrhoea, malnutrition, and malaria.  

MSF teams are responding in three border regions, Sila, Wadi Fira, and Ouaddaï.

In Chad, we provide basic healthcare, malnutrition screening and treatment, vaccinations, and sexual and reproductive healthcare through existing local health facilities, and mobile clinics. Our teams have also begun digging boreholes to supply camps and local communities with water. In some places, we provide refugee communities with plastic sheeting, mosquito nets and bars of soap, which are crucial to prevent the spread of malaria and diarrhoea.

MSF is also working with the Ministry of Public Health and other organisations to provide patient care and support the response to a cholera outbreak. We are responsible for vaccination and cold chain management in the community and transit camp in Adré, as well as in Metché camp. We have also established several cholera treatment units and cholera treatment centers in Adré, Aboutenge, Irdimi, Tulum, Metché, Tiné, and Allacha.

South Sudan 

Since the eruption of conflict in Sudan, over 1 million people have crossed into South Sudan to seek refuge according to UNHCR. This influx has overwhelmed the already dire humanitarian situation in the country. Our teams are running emergency activities in Abyei special administrative area and Juba to provide the refugees and returnees with healthcare services, including care for war-related injuries. In Renk, we are working to care for refugees and returnees, including by treating war-related injuries. After a cholera outbreak was declared in Renk, MSF teams vaccinated people in Renk, Malkal, Rubkona, and Juba, as well as in Gorom refugee camp.

 

What we need in Sudan

  1. Attacks must stop now. The warring parties cannot continue to inflict severe suffering on people by killing, raping, and attacking civilians, destroying livelihoods and infrastructure, and displacing people.

  2. Safe and unhindered humanitarian access must be granted now. Every attack or obstruction against health workers and facilities, and humanitarian aid, puts lives in danger and cuts off communities from the care they need.

  3. Urgent and coordinated action is needed now to provide people with healthcare, clean water, sanitation services, and shelter. The overcrowded conditions and lack of basic services in camps in Sudan, and in those for people fleeing outside of Sudan, are delaying care and fuelling disease.

  4. Urgent and coordinated action is needed to provide food, therapeutic food, and essential care for malnutrition. Widespread food insecurity is driving child malnutrition, and more must be done to prevent deaths and long-term harm.

  5. Urgent action is needed to expand the availability of secure shelters, obstetric care, and general medical and psychological care for survivors of sexual violence. Sexual violence and the collapse of sexual and reproductive health services are leaving people exposed to trauma and preventable deaths.

  6. The humanitarian response must be urgently funded, and humanitarian aid must be brought to besieged areas in Sudan. The humanitarian response in Sudan is currently underfunded, deprioritised, and stalled by a lack of will both in Sudan and internationally.
     

 
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