The World Health Organization said on Friday more than 400 people have been killed and over 3,500 others hurt in the fighting in Sudan.
WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris said this at a press briefing in Geneva.
The UN children’s agency UNICEF added that at least nine children were among the dead and more than 50 children had been wounded.
Citing Sudanese health ministry figures, Harris said 20 health facilities had stopped functioning and another 12 were at risk of stopping.
She disclosed that this would affect “not only the people who have been injured during this terrible fighting, but the people who needed treatment before.”
UNICEF spokesman James Elder also said “It’s taking a devastating toll on the country’s children,”
“As long as fighting continues, children will continue to pay the price.
“The fighting means many families are trapped, with little or no access to electricity, terrified of running out of food, water and medicine.”
He said Sudan already had one of the world’s highest rates of child malnutrition, with critical life-saving care now disrupted for an estimated 50,000 severely acutely malnourished children.
“This is life-threatening,” he said.
Elder said, the most critical cases are “being fed with tubes because that’s literally the only way they can be fed”,
“When the bombing or shelling begins outside the hospital and where medical staff needs to flee, then what?”
Elder also warned that the fighting was putting at risk the cold storage of more than $40 million worth of vaccines and insulin, due to the breaks in the power supply and fuel shortages.
He also added that “We need forces to immediately cease hostilities and for all parties to respect their international obligations to protect children from harm.”
