United Nations: Rhino – Pregnant Sudanese women face enormous risks of losing their babies during childbirth—and sometimes their own lives—due to a lack of specialized medical care amid the ongoing war since April 2023 and escalating humanitarian needs.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which focuses on reproductive health, issued a statement highlighting the urgent needs of pregnant women in Golo, in Central Darfur.

The mountainous town of Golo has only one hospital capable of performing cesarean sections, and it is the only hospital in the surrounding area, which stretches for many kilometers.

Fabrizia Valchioni, UNFPA’s representative in Sudan, said that most women arrive at the hospital from mountain villages after walking for several hours or traveling on wooden stretchers across the mountains while already in labor or suffering from hemorrhaging.

Speaking to reporters via video link from United Nations headquarters in Geneva, Valchioni said that while some can afford to pay for a donkey ride to the hospital, many cannot, and they arrive when it is already too late for them and their babies.

Valchioni noted that supplies, including anesthetics, have run out at the Golo hospital, saying, “A few days after a cesarean section, women return to their villages in the mountains, once again on foot.” She called for support for mobile clinics near vulnerable communities.

Tawila: Unimaginable Needs

The needs are enormous at the camp for internally displaced persons in Tawila, located about 100 kilometers from Golo via mountain roads. The camp is home to hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces.

A representative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) said that women come from Golo to Tawila to undergo cesarean sections when their condition becomes critical.

She added: “It took us nine hours to reach Tawila in a four-wheel-drive vehicle; you can imagine how long it would take a woman to travel from Golo to Tawila on the back of a donkey. That’s why healthcare providers tell us that women arrive in Tawila too late, and by then they can’t do anything to help them, so they lose their lives and their babies.”

Medical facilities in Tawila and throughout central and northern Darfur, as is the case in Golo, face a shortage of the drug “oxytocin,” which is used to stop life-threatening bleeding during childbirth.

Valchioni says: “Arriving at the Tawila camp for internally displaced persons presents one with an unimaginable scene. The camp stretches across the desert in all directions; you can’t see where it begins or ends. There are more than 700,000 people there, and new families arrive every day to set up their temporary tents.”

The UNFPA official stressed the importance of providing reproductive care to the most vulnerable women, saying: “We cannot leave pregnant women with no other option but to travel these vast distances along difficult roads to reach a hospital so they can give birth safely. Health care must be decentralized, and we must expand mobile services to reach those who are hardest to reach.”

She emphasized the need to support local midwives and noted that many of them are paid in sugar and soap instead of money. She said, “A trained midwife equipped with the appropriate supplies can meet 90% of medical needs before, during, and after childbirth.”