Khartoum ـ “Whoever escapes from bullets … will kill the disease”, with these words, the Sudanese young man, Ammar, summarized his tragedy with cancer and war, and he tells Al -Jazeera Net the details of his journey from the upper countryside Fasher To the far north SudanIn search of a dose of hope in a hospital that the conflict was not fire.
Since the outbreak of war between Sudanese army AndRapid support forcesDeath in Sudan no longer only clouds the fronts of the fighting, and chases thousands in their bodies exhausted by the disease, foremost of which is cancer, which has become a double challenge for the displaced in a torn country.
Ammar was forced to ride the smuggling road by more than 1,300 km from Al -Fasher countryside, to escape the city’s rapid support, to end up in Meroe Hospital, before referring to the Oncology Center in Hindi, destroying a distance exceeding 1,800 km.
At every checkpoint, Ammar was paying money to allow the soldiers to cross, while carrying medical papers proving his illness. Ammar says, “The road was dark, but it is more difficult that I could not return to my family unless the war stops.”
Journey
The story of Fatima Abdel Karim Ishaq, 60, from Al -Geneina, is no less tragic, as she left for Chad after the Rapid Support Forces took control of the city, and stayed in a refugee camp, before asking her to return to Sudan to complete the treatment.
Her journey with her husband to the bear in northern Sudan was arduous, which spanned more than 3 thousand kilometers over a period of 15 days, through risky roads, and she says, “We survived death more than once miraculously,” Fatima continues to treat her at the Shendi Center, and she left her children in the asylum camps in Chad, in the hope of recovery and returning to them.
As for Adel Ahmed Omar, he says to Al -Jazeera Net that his disease coincided with the outbreak of the battles between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces in the state of North DarfurWhich forced him to move to the village of “New Ammar” on the outskirts of the city of El Fasher, within the locality of Kamm.
With his deteriorating health, he made a decision to leave the region towards northern Sudan, on an arduous journey through rugged desert roads that took more than 10 days.
The car he was carrying was moving only at night to avoid checkpoints, however, he had to pass through several barriers belonging to the Rapid Support Forces, as he was forced to pay money at each point in exchange for allowing him to continue the road carrying his identification papers and medical reports.
Patient savior
The Center for Nuclear Medicine and Oncology in Hunde is an unprecedented flow, after it has become the only semi -resort for cancer patients from various states of Sudan, according to what the director of the center in charge, Dr. Al -Hadi Hassan Al -Muqaddam, confirms.
Al -Hadi tells Al -Jazeera Net that the center was receiving 500 cases annually before the war, but today it deals with more than 900 cases per month, most of them from Khartoum, Darfur, Kordofan and Al -Jazeera.
Although the absorptive capacity does not exceed 70 beds, of which only 25 are for chemical doses, doctors are forced to receive patients on chairs or even sharing one bed.
The center suffers from a debt of 87 million Sudanese pounds (about 34 thousand dollars) to cover the electricity and operating expenses, in addition to a large shortage of cadres, as one nurse works for 20 patients, and the center lacks many basic medicines, and suffers from slow contracting procedures to bring medications from abroad through the Federal Medical Supply Fund.
The residence dilemma
Nevertheless, the center succeeded in receiving support from countries such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia and India, to provide some doses of chemotherapy for free, according to the head of the pharmacy department, Suzan Abu Al -Qasim, who made it clear that the center attends 900 doses per month compared to 1600 doses annually before the war.
Patients coming from remote areas face the dilemma of the residence during the long treatment periods, and the “Salva Charitable” association runs a break for patients only 4 rooms, but it receives more than 80 patients, while their companions reside in the courtyard. Doctor Heba Salah tells Al -Jazeera Net that she examines about 30 patients from different parts of the country.
The restaurant supervisor, Youssef Ahmed, explains that some patients are forced to stay in the break throughout the treatment period due to the difficulty of returning to their areas.
The Charitable Society has succeeded in buying a plot of land adjacent to the center to build a new break, but the project has stopped since 2018 due to the lack of funding.
Hope is eroded
With the deterioration of the humanitarian situation and the continuation of the war, the pressure on the patients and their families increases, and Susan says that the association helps those in need of providing meals and travel, but it confirms that the need has expanded a lot after the war, and providing food and medicine has become one of the biggest challenges.
In Sudan today, cancer is not only faced with the medicine, but with will and hope, and perhaps with a little luck in escaping the hell of war, and in light of all this, the initiatives of goodness and solidarity of society remain a lifeline for many who were exhausted by pain and we have gone through the path of treatment.