AFTER Sudan’s army recaptured the national capital region of Khartoum in March, tens of thousands of people returned to check on their homes and reunite with loved ones.
The joy of returning was tempered by the shock of seeing the damage caused during nearly two years under the control of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group that has been fighting the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), recognised by many Sudanese and the UN as the de facto authority in Sudan, since April 2023.
In a region whose hospitals and food and medicine stores had been systematically plundered by the RSF, many returnees started falling sick.
Many of the returnees had settled in Omdurman, one of the national capital’s three cities, where living conditions were slightly better than in the other cities. This is because several localities in Omdurman never came under the RSF’s control, insulating it from heavy clashes, pillaging, and looting.
Omdurman quickly became overcrowded, with “thousands of people [returning] from Egypt alone”, according to Dr Dirar Abeer, a member of Khartoum’s Emergency Response Rooms, neighbourhood committees spearheading relief efforts across the country.
The crowding, Dr Abeer said, meant an accelerated spread of cholera, an acute, highly contagious diarrhoeal infection that is endemic to Sudan and can be fatal if not treated.
“In areas south of the Nile in Omdurman, there are a lot of corpses rotting next to [or in] the Nile, and this has [partially] caused the spread of infection,” said Badawi, a volunteer in Omdurman who declined to give his full name due to the sensitivity of speaking in a warzone.
Cholera has become an epidemic in Sudan, spreading in several states, including White Nile and Gadarif, and killing hundreds in the last two weeks.
As in Khartoum, the spread was fuelled by overcrowding and a lack of essential services in these regions.
The waterborne disease could be stopped with basic sanitation and provisions, said Fazli Kostan, the project coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF.
“But that’s not really possible right now,” he told Al Jazeera, referring to a lack of electricity to pump water since Omdurman’s electricity grids went down on May 14.
The RSF had fired a barrage of suicide drones that day, which took out major power stations and grids, consequently shutting down water treatment plants and causing a sharp rise in cases.
Deprived of safe drinking and bathing water, people have resorted to drinking contaminated water from the Nile, as well as scooping up water from the ground after it rains, Badawi said.