These are loud complaints raised by Sudanese doctors to warn of the danger of the ongoing war on the lives of patients.
A number of these doctors and workers from Sudan’s few oncology hospitals give Sky News Arabia a picture of what ‘stray bullets’ and clashes between the military and Rapid Support Forces have done to place barriers between cancer patients and access to their treatment.
Hospitals closed and doses delayed
The deputy director of Al-Nazra Oncology Hospital in Khartoum, Dr Abeer Omar Al-Zubair, said the hospital had completely ceased to function after being turned into “military barracks”.
The hospital is located in the center of the capital, and it is at the heart of the “clashes” and was bombed, and all doctors, workers and medical personnel were evacuated, according to its press release.
In her testimony, she points out that: “Inside the hospital, there is all the information, data, medical certificates, and all the treatment details of the patients, and it has become impossible to access them. . Inside Khartoum, there are currently no oncology centres. ”
As for the other cities, “there are a few oncology treatment centers, but there is an obstacle related to the lack of drugs, painkillers and chemotherapy treatments. If cancer patients residing in Khartoum can access oncology treatment centers in the regions, then the drugs are limited and doses are not available to them. »
Al-Zawra Hospital was treating 1,000 patients a month, which has stopped since the clashes began, as Abeer Al-Zubair explains, pointing out that there are those whose planned doses were delayed, and there are children with leukemia who have not received treatment since the fighting began.
infant mortality
The Head of Pediatric Oncology Unit at Al-Amal Hospital in Khartoum, Dr. Muhammad Awad Al-Khatib, talks about the state of hospitals specializing in the treatment of children, saying that across Sudan, there only two hospitals to treat childhood cancer. , the first is Al-Amal Hospital in Khartoum, which is completely closed, and the second is in Madani in Gezira State, which is small and unable to treat all patients, and difficult to access due to clashes.
Al-Amal Hospital treated 1,500 to 2,000 children per month, ranging in age from one day to 15 years old.
Al-Khatib warns that “children’s cancer treatment doses are calculated and must be received at a specific time, and delaying it will cause a setback for patients that can lead to death.”
“The situation has become dangerous due to the lack of drugs for chemotherapy and radiotherapy,” commented a professor of diseased tissue pathology, Dr. Ihsan Abdel Halim.
From a diagnostic point of view, medical personnel have lost many tissue samples from damaged patients. Because of the impossibility for the laboratory workers to go to their place of work, according to what she transmitted from her observations.
“Stop the War”
Dr. Al-Khatib has no choice but to tell the parties to the conflict: “Stop the war, or allow patients to receive care in a safe place where stray bullets do not reach.”
And Dr Al-Zubair sent a message to all concerned: “The war must be stopped so that water can return to normal, provide medicine and allow patients to receive care”, calling for to provide “work equipment and treatment, and to enable medical personnel to carry out their work to relieve the suffering of cancer patients.”
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