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More than three years into Sudan’s war, the humanitarian response has rightly focused on the basics of survival: food, shelter, water, and emergency medical care. But another crisis is unfolding quietly alongside it, one that gets far less attention: the slow collapse of the essential health services people rely on every day
Across the country, millions of people are losing access to the essential healthcare services that sustain health and everyday life. Children born with entirely treatable conditions are waiting months, sometimes years, for surgery; cancer patients see their treatment interrupted mid-course; people with kidney disease can’t reliably get dialysis; pregnant women travel long distances for a functioning maternity ward, and the hospitals still operational are stretched thin, overwhelmed by demand, short on medicine and staffed by health workers working under extreme pressure.
The World Health Organization calls Sudan one of the largest and most complex humanitarian emergencies in the world right now: an estimated 33.7 million people require humanitarian assistance, including 21 million who need health assistance, while the health system keeps deteriorating under the weight of conflict, mass displacement, disease outbreaks, and funding that never quite covers the need. In many conflict-affected areas, most health facilities have stopped functioning, leaving entire communities without even basic care.
The fallout goes well beyond emergency medicine. When people think of humanitarian crises, they usually picture trauma care: treating war wounds, responding to outbreaks. But long and drawn-out crises also break the routine health services that quietly prevent disability, manage chronic illness, and stop avoidable deaths. Sudan, now in its third year of conflict, is entering this second, less visible emergency.
Children make the case most starkly. A child born with a cleft lip, a congenital urological problem, or another surgically correctable condition doesn’t have the luxury of waiting for the conflict to end. Every month of delay narrows the window for recovery, raises the risk of lifelong disability and developmental harm, and adds another burden onto families already stretched thin by displacement and economic hardship.
Some humanitarian organizations are responding by folding specialized medical care into their broader relief work. On a recent medical mission, Qatar Charity sent in a multidisciplinary team of pediatric specialists who performed dozens of surgeries for children with congenital and complex conditions. For many of these families, the surgery offered renewed hope after months of waiting and interrupted care. Qatar Charity has also helped deliver specialized medicines and supplies for kidney disease and cancer patients, keeping treatment going for thousands who would otherwise have seen it interrupted and has supplied intravenous solutions and essential medicines to hospitals operating under enormous strain, alongside its wider work on water, sanitation, and other basic services.
These interventions are saving lives and helping preserve essential health services at a time when Sudan’s health system is under unprecedented strain. Yet humanitarian organizations cannot, and were never intended to, replace a functioning national health system. Medical missions and emergency supplies provide vital lifelines, but they cannot substitute for resilient hospitals, trained health workers, reliable supply chains and accessible primary healthcare. Without greater investment in protecting these systems, Sudan risks emerging from today’s humanitarian crisis with a generation facing preventable illness, disability and diminished prospects for recovery.
Protecting essential health services must therefore become a central pillar of Sudan’s humanitarian response. Alongside food, water, shelter and emergency medical assistance, greater attention must be given to sustaining maternal and child health services, chronic disease management, specialized surgery, rehabilitation and access to essential medicines. Preserving these services is not only about meeting immediate health needs, it is also about safeguarding the country’s capacity to recover when the conflict ends.
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