Sudan's Healthcare Crisis Deepens as War Disrupts Drug Supplies and Fuels Smuggling Networks For over three years, the civil war between Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has devastated the country’s healthcare system. Hospitals, health centres, and pharmaceutical factories have been destroyed or rendered inoperable, leaving millions without access to life-saving treatments. Diabetic patients like Murtada Mohieddin, a 50-year-old man in Khartoum North, now face a daily struggle to secure insulin, often finding their supplies spoiled or expired due to poor storage conditions. “Sometimes the insulin is spoiled,” Mohieddin explains, inspecting his limited stock. “You can check the expiration date, but it could still be damaged from poor storage.” His ordeal reflects a broader crisis where medical resources are scarce, unregulated, and often unsafe. The conflict, which began as a power struggle between SAF and RSF, has killed over 50,000 people and displaced 14 million, nearly a quarter of Sudan’s population. The war has crippled domestic pharmaceutical production, leaving the country reliant on a fragmented and unreliable supply chain. Smuggling networks have flourished in the vacuum, flooding markets with unregulated drugs locally known as “Boko” medicines. These include critical intravenous malaria treatments smuggled across borders, which bypass strict temperature controls and quality checks, often resulting in spoiled or toxic products. In Omdurman, pharmacies face a dual crisis: scarcity and contamination. Mutawakil Hamza, a pharmacist there, warns that smuggled medicines are “ultimately injections for intravenous use, and this is highly dangerous to a patient’s health.#world_health_organization #rapid_support_forces #sudanese_armed_forces #murtada_mohieddin #khartoum_north
