Sudan Health Ministry: Rains leave 46 people dead

According to the Sudanese Ministry of Health 46 people died in the country last week as a result of heavy rainfall and flash floods.

A total of 9,260 houses collapsed, of which 595 entirely and 3,317 partially, the Undersecretary of the Health Ministry, Suleiman Abdeljabbar told reporters in Khartoum on Thursday.

He said that 154 places in 25 localities have been affected by the rains.

At least 1,606 heads of livestock were lost in the country, he added. 127 public facilities have been affected, including mosques, schools, health centres, and other government institutions.

Since more than a week, heavy rains are flooding various parts of Sudan. Radio Dabanga reported on Friday that an 8-year-old boy drowned in floods not far from his home in Khartoum the day before.

On Thursday, activists warned for “a humanitarian catastrophe” if the authorities do not intervene. The coordinator of the neighbourhood committees in the southern belt of Khartoum reported the collapse of 5,224 houses, in addition to “significant losses in districts not counted”. He reported two cases of “acute watery diarrhoea [suspected to be cholera*]”.

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.

* 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 standards of the World Health Organisation confirming that the disease was cholera, the Sudanese authorities and several international organisations persistently referred to it as ‘acute watery diarrhoea’.

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