New cholera outbreak in Sudan kills 172 people in a week

A new cholera outbreak in Sudan has killed 172 people and infected more than 2,500 over the past week, authorities said on Tuesday.

Most cases were reported in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, and its twin city of Omdurman, but cholera was also detected in other provinces across the country.

Medical NGO Doctors Without Borders, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières or MSF, said Sudan’s healthcare facilities were unable to cope with the surge of patients.

The cholera spike began in mid-May, with MSF teams treating almost 2,000 suspected cholera cases in the past week alone according to Sudan coordinator for MSF Joyce Bakker.

She said the scenes in treatment centres were “disturbing”, with many patients arriving “too late to be saved.”

“We don’t know the true scale of the outbreak, and our teams can only see a fraction of the full picture”, Bakker added.

She called for a united response, including water, sanitation and hygiene programmes and more treatment facilities.

In March, MSF said that 92 people had died of cholera in Sudan’s White Nile State, where 2,700 people had contracted the disease since late February.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said that the water-borne disease is a fast-developing and highly contagious infection that causes diarrhoea and leads to severe dehydration and possible death within hours when not treated.

The disease is transmitted through the ingestion of contaminated food or water.

This cholera outbreak is the latest crisis for Sudan after the country entered its third year of war in April.

At least 20,000 people have been reported killed since fighting began in 2023, though the number is likely far higher, and more than 14 million have been displaced and forced from their homes.

Sudan is also facing what the United Nations says is the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, combining war atrocities, disease, famine, and lack of access to safe drinking water.

The country's health minister Haitham Ibrahim attributed the cholera surge around Khartoum to the return of many Sudanese who had fled their homes.

He said their returns had strained the city’s dwindling water resources.

The outbreak in Sudan is part of a larger cholera spread that has reached 18 African countries since January, with the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and South Sudan among the most affected, according to WHO.