Sudan: MSF steps in to support maternity care after major funding cuts

Reproductive health services for women in El Geneina are very limited and not easily accessible. As a local association, we provide a range of essential services in West Darfur, including sexual and reproductive healthcare, protection services, advocacy, breast cancer awareness, and health promotion, in addition to family planning. We have stepped in to support women with these services to reduce maternal deaths and ensure women can access integrated, high-quality reproductive care.

A few months after the war started in April 2023, our association resumed its work in West Darfur from our office in El Geneina in November 2023, supported by six months of funding from the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). During that period, we focused on mobile clinics, reproductive health services, and supplying family planning methods to mothers.

When this funding ended in June 2024, support for the clinic and our office stopped. But we did not stop. Despite the severe gaps in services for women, we continued, driven by our determination and commitment as Sudanese women ourselves, to provide family planning, reproductive healthcare, and community awareness.

Recently, MSF stepped in with financial support for reproductive health services. This allowed us to reactivate our former centre at the Mother and Child Centre.

The partnership with MSF has had a significant impact, and we are deeply grateful. It supports a community suffering from war and severe economic hardship, where many families cannot afford the cost of delivery or basic healthcare.

Together with MSF, we provide safe delivery services, completely free of charge, including laboratory tests and pharmacy services.

Thanks to this support, we can also offer fully integrated care: health education, nutrition counselling, breastfeeding support, and more, all through the centre.

Families wait inside El Geneina Teaching Hospital, one of the few public hospitals still functioning in West Darfur, supported by Doctors Without Borders. Once a regional referral centre, it now operates under extreme strain as the Sudanese civil war enters its third year, with thousands injured in fighting and an escalating health crisis driven by displacement, food insecurity, and disease. Photographer: Moises Saman | Date: 02/08/2025 | Location: El Geneina

Family members comfort Nazia Suleiman, 22, after she delivered a stillborn baby and underwent surgery for complications at El Geneina Teaching Hospital, one of the few public hospitals still functioning in West Darfur, supported by Doctors Without Borders. Photographer: Moises Saman| Date: 01/08/2025 | Location: El Geneina

Internally displaced women who fled the fighting in Khartoum gather during a food distribution at a former school in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur. Photographer: Moises Saman| Date: 01/08/2023 | Location: El GeneinaInside the pediatric ward of the El Geneina Teaching Hospital, children take part in a psychological support session organised by Doctors Without Borders. Balloons and toys offer a rare moment of joy for young patients and displaced families living through the trauma of war. Photographer: Moises Saman| Date: 29/07/2025 | Location: El Geneina

About Doctors Without Borders (MSF)

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is a global network of principled medical and other professionals who specialise in medical humanitarian work, driven by our common humanity and guided by medical ethics. We strive to bring emergency medical care to people caught in conflicts, crises, and disasters in more than 70 countries worldwide.

In South Africa, we currently run a non-communicable diseases (NCDs) project in Butterworth, Eastern Cape province, where we support the Department of Health (DoH) in improving care for patients with diabetes and hypertension. The project focuses on improving screening, diagnosis, management, and prevention of NCDs through advocacy, research, health promotion, training, and mentorship of Community Healthcare Workers.

MSF is also recognised as one of the pioneers in providing antiretroviral treatment (ART) in the public sector. It started the first HIV programme in South Africa in 1999. The organisation's earlier interventions in the country have primarily been on developing new testing and treatment strategies for HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis (TB) in Eshowe (Kwa-Zulu Natal) and Khayelitsha (Western Cape). The Eshowe project was handed over to DoH in 2023 after 12 years of operations. The Khayelitsha project was closed in 2020 after 22 years of activities and campaigning for improved HIV and TB treatment.

Other projects we have been involved in include our Migrant Project in the country's capital, Tshwane, which was handed over to authorities and a local Community-Based Organisation after building the capacity to work with undocumented populations. We also previously offered free, high-quality, and confidential medical care to survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in Rustenburg, North West province.

To learn more about our work in South Africa, please visit this page on our website (www.msf.org.za). To support MSF’s work: