Pregnant women in Sudan’s Central Darfur region are losing their babies, and in some cases their own lives, owing to a severe shortage of specialist maternity care in areas cut off by the country’s ongoing conflict, the United Nations has warned.
In an alert issued by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the agency’s Fabrizia Falcione described acute needs among expectant mothers in the mountain town of Golo, in western Sudan, where a single hospital serves as the only facility for many miles capable of performing a Caesarean section.
Ms Falcione said most women reached the hospital from remote mountain villages on foot, often walking for hours while already in labour or bleeding, or were carried on rough wooden stretchers when they could go no further. Those with the means to do so hired a donkey for the journey, she said, but many could not, and a significant number arrived too late to save either themselves or their babies.
The hospital itself, she added, frequently runs short of essential supplies, including anaesthetic and oxytocin, the drug used to control life-threatening bleeding after childbirth.
UNFPA is calling for greater international support for mobile clinics and midwives serving Sudan’s most vulnerable and hard-to-reach communities, as the country’s civil war continues to devastate its healthcare system.
