Shafaqna English- A series of X-rays released by medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) revealed the impact of the war in Sudan on children.
The Images show a piece of shrapnel buried deep inside a 20-month-old girl’s head and a bullet embedded in an 18-month-old boy’s chest .The two babies were treated at Khartoum’s Bashair teaching hospital.
Bashair teaching hospital treated 314 children under the age of 15 for wounds from gunshots or blasts this year – about one in six of all war-wounded patients received at the hospital.
The baby girl was one of 12 children rushed to the hospital after an explosion at a nearby market. But the hospital’s capacity is limited – severe burns cannot be treated, and surgeries are stalled because the lack of access provided by the warring sides means supplies have not been received for more than a year.
This meant that when an 18-month-old boy named Riyad arrived with a 50% chance of survival after being hit by a bullet while sleeping, the medical team had to fight for hours to stabilise him but could not remove the bullet from his chest.
Mohammed al-Hammadi, MSF’s field coordinator at the hospital, said that in most cases, patients like Riyad cannot be evacuated because of the divisions in the city.
These barriers have resulted in “invisible” deaths, caused by preventable disease and starvation, according to Dr Maysoon Dahab, co-director of the Sudan Research Group at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).
MSF said it found 1,500 women and children who were severely malnourished from the 4,186 it screened between 19 October and 8 November 2024.
Dahab said the LSHTM report shows how the war is causing deaths that could be prevented, but the lack of aid and intervention meant Sudanese civilians were suffering.
Source: The Guardian