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A cholera outbreak in Sudan has claimed 120 lives and left 1,102 others with suspected infections since May, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Wednesday.
The outbreak is the country’s third in three years and comes as Sudan’s healthcare system continues to struggle under the impact of more than three years of conflict between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces.
WHO’s representative in Sudan, Shible Sahbani, said cholera was once a disease that appeared roughly every three years in the country but has now become a near-continuous threat because of the ongoing conflict, limited access to affected areas and shortages of essential supplies.
The latest outbreak was officially declared this week in West Kordofan, a region at the centre of fighting between government and paramilitary forces.
Health officials also expressed concern that the disease is spreading into neighbouring North Kordofan, where nearly 300 suspected cases and three deaths have already been reported.
The warning comes as Sudan approaches its rainy season, a period that typically worsens cholera outbreaks because millions of people lack access to safe drinking water while flooding makes humanitarian access even more difficult.
The United Nations has also warned that North Kordofan’s capital, El-Obeid, faces the threat of a major ground assault by the RSF, while repeated drone attacks have already disrupted electricity and water supplies in the city.
Drone strikes on the city’s power stations are already “disrupting access to lifesaving drinking water and electricity”, UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said on Tuesday, warning of the risk of mass atrocities.
According to the WHO, around 40 per cent of health facilities across Sudan are no longer functioning, while most of the remaining facilities operate only partially, limiting the availability of medical services.
“Forty per cent of health facilities are non-functional at all, and the remaining almost 60 per cent are only partially functioning, meaning they are providing only a few services, or not enough to patients in the area,” Sahbani said.
Sudan’s previous cholera outbreak, which lasted from July 2024 to March 2026, infected more than 124,000 people and resulted in about 3,500 deaths, according to government data.
