On Saturday, Ibrahim Mohamed saw that the one in the hospital bed next to him had died. Three days later and while he remained in the hospital despite the suffocating smell from the rot of the dead man next to him, he was forced to leave to escape the bullets.

In Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, a power struggle between two generals has come to end a health system already brought to its knees by wars and international sanctions that have rocked the country for decades.

After more than a week of open warfare in the heart of the Sudanese capital with more than 5 million residents, patients and doctors describe the absolute horror.

62-year-old Mohamed Ibrahim regularly visits his 25-year-old son Ibrahim in hospital, where he is being treated for leukemia. On April 15, his nightmare took a completely different turn.

His son’s neighbor died, “but his body stayed there because of the fighting,” the 60-year-old told AFP.

“The morgues are full”

For Dr. Atiya Abdullah, secretary-general of the medical association, scenes of this nature are no longer uncommon in Sudan amid the chaos: “decomposing bodies remain in hospital rooms” because they cannot be transported elsewhere.

“Mortuaries are full, bodies are strewn on the streets, even the hospitals where the wounded are treated may at any moment be forced to stop all activity,” he says, exhausted.

Because everywhere in the city, the crossfire does not discriminate between doctors, patients, and hospitals.

Mohammed Ibrahim was forced to make a difficult choice: “either they would stay (in the hospital) enduring the smell of rot, or they would come out facing the risk of being shot.”

But after spending three days without food, water, or electricity in the hospital, “we were told to leave because there was fighting and the hospital was hit by gunfire.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) counted yesterday, Sunday, “eight dead and two injured” among the health personnel.

In all, according to the doctors’ union, 13 hospitals were bombed and 19 were forced to close – for lack of supplies or because they were ordered by the fighters.

“We are obliged to turn patients away because they are at risk of being shot and killed if you stay,” says Dr. Abdullah.

Mohamed Ibrahim was forced to carry his sick son “under fire and fighting” for five hours until they reached their home.

There his son now languishes because with nearly three-quarters of hospitals out of business and “surgery now dealing only with emergencies,” no hospital could take him, according to Dr. Abdullah.

“Two doctors for a whole hospital”

And this happens because now everything is shared with the report in the hospitals of Khartoum and other areas plagued by the fighting: “we are facing shortages of medical and surgical equipment, fuel for the generators, ambulances, blood units” notes the doctor.

“In some hospitals, the same health workers have been working since April 15 without any days off. Some hospitals only have one surgeon, sometimes there are only two doctors for an entire hospital,” he continues.

And all calls for a humanitarian ceasefire or safe corridors have so far gone nowhere. Healthcare workers are often attacked, the UN reports, and for combatants engaged in a life-and-death battle, hospitals are no longer sanctuaries.

On social media, residents are trying to organize to find medication for family members suffering from chronic illnesses.

However, the stocks that do exist are deteriorating before everyone’s eyes, and Unicef ​​has already announced that the fighting and power outages could destroy the country’s $40 million stockpile of insulin and vaccines.

On Friday, as another cease-fire promise fell through, the doctors’ union issued instructions on Facebook for handling, transporting and burying a decomposing body.