Heavy rainfall, floods across Sudan

According to the Undersecretary of Sudan’s Federal Ministry of Health, 12 states in the country have been affected by torrential rains.

Undersecretary Suleiman Abdeljabbar said in a press conference in Khartoum on Monday that in particular El Kuma and Tawila in North Darfur and El Girba locality in Kassala have been affected.

“Despite the heavy rainfall, the ministry has not recorded any epidemiological cases,” he said.

However, Abdeljabbar said there are indicators that the normal rate of mosquitoes and subsequent malaria cases in West Kordofan, El Gedaref, and Khartoum, are being exceeded.

The undersecretary said that no cases of “watery diarrhoea” have been recorded this year.

In 2016 and 2017, Sudan experienced a large cholera epidemic in which reportedly more than 900 people died. In spite of numerous independent tests conducted according to standardsof the World Health Organisation confirming that the disease was cholera, the Sudanese authorities and several international organisations persistently refer to it as ‘acute watery diarrhoea’.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Sudan reported in end July that heavy rains and flash floods affected an estimated 13,000 people in Darfur and eastern Sudan.

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