A first plane carrying “eight tonnes” of aid, including “surgical equipment”, landed in Sudan today to “provide care to 1,500 patients” in the country, where most hospitals are out of service due to the fighting.

The plane, which is also carrying humanitarian personnel, took off from Amman and landed in Port-Sudan, a coastal city 850 km east of Khartoum, where the battles are concentrated. Sudan’s airspace has been closed since April 15 when fighting began at Khartoum airport.

According to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), this shipment contains “anesthesia products, bandages, suture material and other surgical items.”

This equipment “will make it possible to treat 1,500 wounded, we hope now to be able to quickly deliver it to the bigger hospitals in Khartoum,” the ICRC’s regional director for Africa told reporters. Patrick Youssef.

But, he warns, to provide care “we need more security guarantees in Khartoum and Darfur”, where most of the fighting, which has killed more than 500 people in more than two weeks, continues.

In Darfur, the situation is “very difficult”, he adds, “the population is displaced, under normal circumstances we would follow him but in the current situation it is impossible”.

For doctors at Sudanit is above all necessary to restore the water and electricity supply and to remove the militants occupying certain facilities.

Alternatives are also needed for the 15 bombed hospitals and groups of doctors to replace colleagues who in some cases have not stopped working for two weeks.

“Only 16% of hospitals are functioning in Khartoum according to the UN, the situation is tragic due to the lack of doctors and the lack of medical equipment” Youssef also warns, who clarifies that if “under normal conditions, a hospital should be supplied every two days, in wartime, especially if, as at the moment, hospitals are looted and attacked, this period is shortened.”

It is also necessary, doctors warn, to find the resources to care for the “12,000 patients” who, without dialysis in hospitals where supplies are empty and generators are down, “are at risk of dying”.

“Chronic diseases will be among our future priorities,” notes Youssef.

First, says the international organization based in Geneva“the ICRC is preparing to charter a second plane to deliver more medical supplies and humanitarian personnel.”

Since April 15, 528 people have been killed and more than 4,000 injured, according to Sudan’s health ministry. But this tally remains very provisional as it is not easy to reach the corpses lying on the streets and therefore the dead are impossible to record.

“The people of the Sudanese Red Crescent are in the streets trying to collect the bodies,” according to Youssef.