August 27, 2024, marked 500 days since Sudan began enduring its worst humanitarian crisis. This is a shameful moment for international humanitarian organizations and donors, who, for over 16 months, have failed to provide an adequate response to the country’s escalating medical needs, from catastrophic child malnutrition to widespread disease outbreaks. Heavy restrictions from both warring parties have drastically limited capacities, including ours, to deliver aid, says Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in a recent press release. MSF is an international organization that provides medical humanitarian assistance to victims of conflict, natural disasters, epidemics, or healthcare exclusion.

Fighting between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), starting from the capital, Khartoum, on April 15, 2023, has been raging across multiple parts of the country, triggering a massive humanitarian crisis in Sudan. The conflict has left tens of thousands of people killed and injured. Between April 2023 and June 2024, MSF treated 11,985 war-wounded at supported hospitals. The violence has created the world’s largest displacement crisis: over 10 million people, or one in five people in Sudan, have been forced to flee their homes, many of them facing repeated displacement, according to the UN.

As political solutions for the crisis stagger, malnutrition rises amid increasing food prices and a lack of humanitarian supplies. Beyond the catastrophic situation in North Darfur’s Zamzam camp, MSF’s inpatient therapeutic feeding centers in other areas of Darfur are full of patients, and the same applies to refugee camps where operated in eastern Chad. Since the onset of the war until June 2024, MSF has treated 34,751 acutely malnourished children in Sudan.  

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