Sudan’s health emergency is not a secondary effect of the war. It is one of the main ways the war is killing and disabling people, including those far from an active front line. By 2026, the country’s medical system had lost facilities, staff, transport routes and reliable access to medicines at the same time that malnutrition and infectious disease were increasing demand.
The World Health Organization reported in April that 37 percent of health facilities across Sudan were nonfunctional. About 21 million people lacked needed health services. Since April 15, 2023, WHO had verified 217 attacks on health care, associated with 2,052 deaths and 810 injuries. Those incidents include attacks affecting hospitals, ambulances, patients and health workers.
The significance of a nonfunctional facility extends beyond trauma care. A closed clinic also means interrupted vaccination, maternal care, malaria diagnosis, treatment for chronic disease and management of childhood malnutrition. People may have to travel longer distances through insecure areas, increasing the chance that a treatable condition becomes severe before care is reached.
Nutrition is especially dangerous because it interacts with infection. WFP estimates that about 825,000 children under age 5 are expected to suffer severe acute malnutrition in 2026. Severe malnutrition weakens immune defenses and raises the risk from common infections. In July alone, UNICEF-supported programs screened 1.43 million children for acute malnutrition and admitted 82,300 children with severe acute malnutrition for treatment.
Disease outbreaks add another layer. WHO has reported malaria, dengue, measles, polio, hepatitis E, meningitis and diphtheria in multiple states during the conflict. After an earlier cholera outbreak was declared over in March, new cholera activity emerged later in the year. In early September, UN agencies supported a vaccination campaign in parts of North Darfur, South Darfur and West Kordofan aiming to reach about 928,000 people.
The geography of the war makes disease control harder. Kordofan has become a new center of fighting and displacement. When roads close, medical supplies do not simply arrive late; they can fail to arrive at all. On Aug. 30, an aerial attack outside Dilling destroyed two clearly marked World Food Programme trucks carrying more than 50 metric tons of food toward Kadugli. Food insecurity and health insecurity are closely linked in populations already facing acute malnutrition.
Water and sanitation are similarly connected to disease. UNICEF provided safe water access to 183,900 people in July and carried out hygiene promotion for tens of thousands more. These interventions are essential in crowded displacement settings, where contaminated water and weak sanitation can accelerate cholera and other diarrheal disease.
The scale of the underlying humanitarian burden is immense: UNICEF estimates 33.7 million people need assistance. Around 19.5 million people have faced acute food insecurity at Crisis level or worse, and up to 200,000 were projected to be in Catastrophe conditions during the June-to-September lean season. That means the health system is dealing with both direct conflict injuries and a population-level rise in vulnerability.
International agencies are delivering millions of consultations, vaccines and nutrition treatments, but the gap between need and resources remains large. At the end of July, UNICEF had mobilized $352.2 million of a $962.9 million appeal, leaving 63 percent unfunded. WHO has also stressed that safe access and protection of health care are prerequisites for restoring services.
The next public-health turning point will depend less on a single new treatment than on whether clinics can stay open, supply routes can remain safe and nutrition and vaccination programs can reach people before they become critically ill. In Sudan, protecting a hospital, a water system or a food convoy is now part of disease prevention itself.