Sudanese Search for Oxygen Cylinders amid Third COVID Wave

Workers prepare oxygen cylinders for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patients inside the Sudanese Liquid Gas Company in Khartoum, Sudan, May 5, 2021. Picture taken May 5, 2021. (Reuters)
Workers prepare oxygen cylinders for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patients inside the Sudanese Liquid Gas Company in Khartoum, Sudan, May 5, 2021. Picture taken May 5, 2021. (Reuters)
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Sudanese Search for Oxygen Cylinders amid Third COVID Wave

Workers prepare oxygen cylinders for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patients inside the Sudanese Liquid Gas Company in Khartoum, Sudan, May 5, 2021. Picture taken May 5, 2021. (Reuters)
Workers prepare oxygen cylinders for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patients inside the Sudanese Liquid Gas Company in Khartoum, Sudan, May 5, 2021. Picture taken May 5, 2021. (Reuters)

Sudan is finding difficulties providing beds in hospitals, medicines and oxygen for COVID-19 patients who were infected during the third wave.

With a population of over 40 million, Sudan has recorded 33,000 cases and over 2,600 deaths since the start of the pandemic, but officials say the real numbers are likely to be much higher given low rates of testing.

In recent weeks, an acute shortage of oxygen, partly due to power cuts that impeded production at the country’s main plant, has left hospitals unable to provide adequate care to desperately ill COVID patients.

“My father passed away due to the lack of an intensive care bed with a ventilator,” said Khartoum resident Sayda Mahmoud, 34, crying as she recounted his last moments.

“I saw him in front of me as he was dying, suffering, and in pain from shortness of breath for hours until he took his last breath while waiting in a government hospital,” she told Reuters.

Social media is awash with desperate pleas for help from relatives seeking beds, drugs and oxygen cylinders for their loved ones.

Officials say about 300 ventilators are available in the country, a number that is nowhere near what would be needed to respond to the current emergency.

A government study showed 38 percent of oxygen cylinders had been smuggled out of the health system for certain patients to use at home. Some patients bribed hospital staff for the cylinders, while others relied on personal relationships.

“At times of peak coronavirus infections, the crisis of the weak capacity of hospitals in providing beds for patients, providing oxygen cylinders and ventilators, becomes clear,” said Montasir Othman, director of the Emergency and Epidemic Control Department at the Sudanese Ministry of Health.

Last month, officials said Sudan could meet just 40 percent of its need for medicines. The country has 37 hospitals that can take in COVID patients, but only 11 of them are in the capital Khartoum even though it has more than 70 percent of the cases.

Hussein Malasi, a senior manager at the Sudanese Liquid Gas Company, said that under normal circumstances the firm could produce enough medical oxygen to meet the country’s needs, but the country lacks the cylinders needed to transport it.

Authorities say they are urgently facilitating imports of about 1,250 more cylinders to meet patient needs.

The shortage of oxygen and wider failings of the health system are a symptom of a deep malaise in Sudan, which has been stuck in an economic crisis for years.

Following the secession of the oil-producing South in 2011 and decades of international isolation due to US sanctions, the country lacks the foreign reserves needed to procure medicines and other medical supplies abroad.

Authorities complain that only 160,000 have received the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, much less than 400,000 expected by the end of April, due to widespread skepticism and misinformation.



Israeli Strike Kills Children Near Gaza Clinic with No Immediate Truce in Sight

 A beam of light amid smoke and flames is seen resulting from an explosion, as seen from the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border, July 10, 2025. (Reuters)
A beam of light amid smoke and flames is seen resulting from an explosion, as seen from the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border, July 10, 2025. (Reuters)
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Israeli Strike Kills Children Near Gaza Clinic with No Immediate Truce in Sight

 A beam of light amid smoke and flames is seen resulting from an explosion, as seen from the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border, July 10, 2025. (Reuters)
A beam of light amid smoke and flames is seen resulting from an explosion, as seen from the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border, July 10, 2025. (Reuters)

An Israeli airstrike hit Palestinians near a medical center in Gaza on Thursday, killing 10 children and six adults, local health authorities said, as ceasefire talks dragged on with no immediate deal expected.

Verified video footage from the strike in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip showed the bodies of women and children lying in pools of blood amid dust and screaming. One clip showed several motionless children lying on a donkey cart.

"She didn't do anything, she was innocent, I swear. Her dream was for the war to end and that they announce it today, to go back to school," said Samah al-Nouri, sitting by the body of her daughter who was killed in the blast.

"She was only getting treatment in a medical facility. Why did they kill them?" she said, with other bodies laid out around her at a nearby hospital.

Israel's military said it had struck a militant who took part in the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack that triggered the war. It said it was aware of reports regarding a number of injured bystanders and that the incident was under review.

US-based Project HOPE said the strike had hit right outside its Altayara health clinic. "Horrified and heartbroken cannot properly communicate how we feel anymore," the aid group said in a statement.

The Deir al-Balah missile strike came as Israeli and Hamas negotiators hold talks with mediators in Qatar over a proposed 60-day ceasefire and hostage release deal aimed at building agreement on a lasting truce.

A senior Israeli official said on Wednesday that an agreement was not likely to be secured for another one or two weeks, however, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday he was hopeful of a deal.

"I think we're closer, and I think perhaps we're closer than we've been in quite a while," Rubio told reporters at the ASEAN summit in Malaysia.

Several rounds of indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas have failed to produce a breakthrough since the Israeli military resumed its campaign in March following a previous ceasefire.

Repeated attacks by Israeli forces in recent weeks have killed hundreds of Gazans, many of them civilians, and injured thousands, according to local health authorities, putting an enormous strain on the enclave's few remaining hospitals.

Dwindling fuel supplies risk further disruption in the semi-functioning hospitals, including to incubators at the neonatal unit of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, doctors there said.

"We are forced to place four, five or sometimes three premature babies in one incubator," said Dr. Mohammed Abu Selmia, the hospital director, adding that premature babies were now in a critical condition.

An Israeli military official said that fuel destined for hospitals and other humanitarian facilities was let into the enclave on Wednesday and on Thursday.

However, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said that far more fuel was needed to keep essential life-saving and life-sustaining services operating.

TALKS

US President Donald Trump met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week to discuss the situation in Gaza amid reports that Israel and Hamas were nearing agreement on a US-brokered ceasefire proposal after 21 months of war.

Netanyahu said that if the two sides reach agreements on the US 60-day truce plan, Israel will begin negotiations on a permanent ceasefire.

In a statement from Washington, he reiterated Israel's terms for ending the war, including Hamas disarming and no longer ruling Gaza. Hamas has rejected calls to lay down its weapons.

"If this can be achieved through negotiations - that's good. If it's not achieved through 60-day negotiations then we will achieve it by other means, by use of force," Netanyahu said.

A Palestinian official said the talks in Qatar were in crisis and that issues under dispute, including whether Israel would continue to occupy parts of Gaza after a ceasefire, had yet to be resolved.

The two sides previously agreed a ceasefire in January, but it did not lead to a deal on ending the war and Israel resumed its military assault two months later, stopping all aid supplies into Gaza for 11 weeks and telling civilians to leave the north of the tiny territory.

Israel's military campaign in Gaza has now killed more than 57,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities. It has destroyed swathes of the territory and driven most Gazans from their homes.

The Hamas attack on Israeli border communities that triggered the war in 2023 killed around 1,200 people and the group seized 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. At least 20 are believed to still be alive.

There has also been repeated violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. An Israeli man was killed at a shopping center in the territory on Thursday by two Palestinian gunmen, who were then shot dead, police said.

In a separate incident, a Palestinian man was shot dead after he stabbed and injured a soldier, the army said.