Many kidney failure patients in Sudan have faced a slow death sentence, the chances of which increase every day as a result of the ongoing military confrontations between the army and the Rapid Support Forces for more than a year, amid the lack of treatment.
Exclusive visual footage obtained by Al Jazeera Network showed the extent and suffering of patients at the Port Sudan Kidney Dialysis Centre in the Red Sea State, where the centre is crowded with a large number of patients who do not receive sufficient dialysis sessions due to the high number of infected cases, which are distributed on a limited number of devices in light of the scarcity and lack of necessary medical supplies.
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During her dialysis session, the little girl, Sherine, spoke to us in a tired voice about her difficult displacement journey to reach the Port Sudan Center for a dialysis session, saying: “The prices of medicines here are very expensive, we cannot afford them.”
As for Mohamed Al-Hassan Youssef, who suffers from kidney failure and heads the Kidney Patients Association in Port Sudan, he spoke to Al Jazeera about the increase in the number of cases coming to the centre, due to displacement from states witnessing military confrontations, which led to a reduction in the number of dialysis sessions for many of them.
Youssef said while undergoing the dialysis process that he performs three dialysis sessions per week, but with the increase in the number of patients, it was reduced to two sessions, which caused health complications for some due to the high level of toxins in the body, which affected many and led to the death of some of them.
Lack of washing centers for children
Mohammed Al Hassan Youssef added: “We suffer at the center from the lack of a specialized department for injured children in light of their increasing numbers, which requires the provision of specialized and qualified cadres to provide medical care for them.”
In March of this year, Health Minister Haitham Mohamed Ibrahim announced that the amount of destruction and sabotage in the health sector amounted to approximately $11 billion, and that the war had completely destroyed hospitals.
In light of the urgent need to support kidney failure dialysis centers in Sudan, the Federal Ministry of Health said in a statement published in September of last year that the number of kidney failure patients is about 8,000 patients, all of whom are receiving treatment in centers distributed across the Sudanese states.
War exacerbates their suffering
The suffering of kidney failure patients in Sudan is increasing due to the ongoing war between the army and the Rapid Support Forces, which has caused their health conditions to deteriorate. Dalia Al-Tahir Omar, director of the Port Sudan Center for Kidney Diseases and Surgery, said in a special interview with Al Jazeera: The center suffers from problems that differ from other states, the most important of which is the electricity problem, which witnesses continuous outages that last for several hours.
She explained that the center lacks electric generators and fuel to address the problems of power outages, ensure the stability of the electricity current, and continue the dialysis sessions. She thanked all sectors and companies working in the oil sector that supported the center with fuel for a whole month.
Washing machine consumption
Director of Port Sudan Center, Dr. Dalia Al-Tahir, revealed that kidney dialysis machines often suffer from malfunctions due to being used in multiple shifts daily to accommodate dialysis needs, which has caused some of them to stop working. Due to the closure of most companies specialized in maintaining medical devices, it takes longer to maintain them.
Dalia revealed that the center “also suffers from other problems, including water, especially since the Red Sea State suffers from water problems in the summer, and for this reason we need more than 50 tons of water daily,” while the center receives large numbers of displaced patients.
False promises and a crumbling sector
For her part, the Director General of the Ministry of Health in the Red Sea State, Ahlam Abdul Rasoul, indicated that despite the challenges, they are working to increase the number of dialysis machines to provide medical care to the increasing numbers of patients coming from all states of Sudan.
She added that the center contains 27 dialysis machines, all of which are of average quality, and operate in four shifts daily, which has caused great pressure on these devices. She revealed that the pressure has reduced the efficiency of the performance of these machines in dialysis sessions for patients.
Ahlam pointed out in an interview with Al Jazeera that many times the specialists and nurses working at the center are forced to activate emergency dialysis sessions during the fifth shift system due to the high number of patients coming to the center.
She pointed out that there were promises from external parties to send a number of dialysis machines, which have not been delivered to them yet. There is a center in the Sinkat area outside Port Sudan that is operating at good capacity, and it has 4 dialysis machines that receive patients coming to those areas.
Last June, the Federal Ministry of Health accused the Rapid Support Forces of bombing the kidney dialysis center in El Fasher, considering that targeting the center was a death sentence for more than 50 kidney patients in El Fasher, and that it was a clear violation of international norms and laws.
In January of this year, the Federal Minister of Health, Haitham Mohamed Ibrahim, announced that the country’s health sector had been severely damaged as a result of the ongoing war and its spread to more than one state, which had doubled the risks to those with chronic diseases.