When Dr. Salwa Elhassan talks about the children who have been killed by Sudan’s war, she isn’t only referring to the casualties of violence. She’s also talking about children who have died from lack of medicine or medical care – including those with Type 1 diabetes who died because insulin or other essential elements of diabetes care weren’t available.
“I hear the daily stories of children who lost their lives because of lack of insulin or diabetes complications,” said Dr. Elhassan, a pediatric endocrinologist and clinic coordinator for the Sudanese Childhood Diabetes Association.
Before Sudan’s conflict between government factions broke into open war on April 15, 2023, the SCDA cared for about 11,000 children with diabetes, in 26 clinics across Sudan. The organization ran the most advanced pediatric diabetes center on the African continent in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital city. Staff had been trained to store and transport insulin under fastidious cold-chain protocols; to educate young patients and families about managing the disease; and to keep precise clinical records that ensured precious insulin was available when and where their young patients needed them.
“We had a very meticulous system,” Dr. Elhassan recalled. “The situation was completely stable.”
War upended that system essentially overnight. Militias occupied the Sudan Childhood Diabetes Centre in Khartoum in 2023. The center had cared for 3,000 young patients – and served as a storage facility for insulin used in all 26 other clinics. Because electricity has been interrupted, Dr. Elhassan knows those medicines are unusable, their safety and potency compromised.
