Sudan: Striving for humanitarian care where no one cares

Ethiopian refugees continue to cross into Sudan but at the border they get little support and humanitarian aid.

“Oh my God,” a stunned Dr Balah whispered to himself as our pick-up truck, loaded with medicines and supplies, finally came to a stop. It was November 16 and we had arrived at the small, dusty village of Hamdayet, wedged at the tip of Sudan’s tripartite border with Eritrea and Ethiopia. Before us lay thousands of refugees who had just fled violence in Ethiopia’s Tigray region. People were scattered across the hard, gritty Sudanese terrain with nothing but an open twilight sky above them. Occasionally, large groups in the hundreds would frantically dash off, hoping to find food, water, shelter or just an ounce of human compassion. It was a grim and urgent image of humanitarian need. Incredibly, eight months later, refugees in eastern Sudan are still struggling to fulfil their basic needs and live a dignified life in the face of what has amounted to a miserably inadequate response to their plight. As project coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Hamdayet, my assignment was simple in theory but daunting in practice: to assess and respond to the acute medical and humanitarian needs of both refugees and the isolated Sudanese community that hosted them. But it was impossible to know where to start when every refugee among the thousands needed help.