One year into creating opportunities to fight Covid-19 in Sudan with medical students, a coalition of Sudanese doctors has taken the lessons learned while working with local communities and is applying them to healthcare for all.

Within six months, with the help of the Sudanese ministry of health, healthcare workers administered 20,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine throughout the country, according to Dr Nada Fadul, one of the co-founders of Sudan’s community Medical Response Team (CMRT).

She first spoke to RFI one year ago about launching the Covid-19 awareness program with the help of medical students.

She admits there were a number of challenges, even some that were discovered on the ground.

“One of our students started talking to women who were standing in the bread line and one of the women brought up the concern that the vaccine clinics are far,“ says Fadul.

It was expensive to travel to the clinic, so it was more of an access issue than vaccine hesitancy. They discussed either driving people to the clinics, or bringing the clinics to the people.

Based at the University of Nebraska in the US, Fadul noticed that neighbourhood pop-up vaccine clinics worked well in an underserved area in Omaha, the largest city in the state.

Applying the same model with outreach in the community the day before the clinic was really positive, she says.

The medical students went to sports clubs, the mosque, the market, and youth groups to talk about vaccinations.

“We are trying to bring vaccines closer to people, so our motto right now is ‘meet them where they’re at’, especially people in remote areas and underserved areas,” she says.

The group has now expanded this to basic health care, not just vaccines, throughout the country, by using community members to promote more trust with healthcare providers.