# Sudan cholera outbreak kills 172 in a week as Khartoum's water and power collapse
Health officials say 70 people died in just two days, with the city’s war-damaged infrastructure speeding transmission.
Sudan’s health ministry says cholera has killed at least 172 people in the past week, with 90% of the fatalities recorded in Khartoum State, as the capital’s public services continue to buckle under conflict. The latest counts reported by the state and federal health ministries show how quickly the outbreak is worsening: Khartoum State said there were 1,177 new infections and 45 deaths on Tuesday, followed by another 942 cases and 25 deaths on Wednesday. That alone added up to 70 deaths in two days in the capital region.
The outbreak is unfolding in a city already battered by war. The supplied report says weeks of drone strikes, blamed on the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, have crippled Khartoum’s water and electricity supply. That matters because cholera spreads far more easily when clean water and sanitation disappear. The combination of conflict damage and breakdowns in basic services has turned the disease into another front in a much larger humanitarian emergency.
Health officials are treating the situation as severe but not hopeless. The report says 89% of patients in isolation centres are recovering, a sign that treatment can still work when people reach care in time. But the same report warns that worsening environmental conditions are accelerating transmission. That is the core danger: once water systems fail and sanitation weakens, each new case has a better chance of becoming many more.
The federal health ministry’s figure of 172 deaths in a week shows that the outbreak is no longer a local flare-up. Up to 90% of hospitals in the hardest-hit regions are reportedly no longer operational, leaving millions without access to critical medical care. The report also says the ongoing conflict has killed tens of thousands and forced 13 million people from their homes, giving the cholera spike a grim context. In a city where health facilities are damaged and displacement is widespread, disease control becomes much harder than simply distributing medicine.
The outbreak comes as the army-backed government says it has cleared the last Rapid Support Forces strongholds in Khartoum State, two months after reclaiming the capital’s core. But the report makes clear that military advances do not immediately restore water, power or public health. That is why the cholera numbers matter beyond the immediate death toll. They are a measure of how badly the city’s infrastructure has been broken by war, and how quickly disease can take advantage when essential systems fail. For now, the crisis is defined by the same two numbers repeated in different ways: rising cases, and a toll that keeps climbing.
That infrastructure damage is what turns a surge of infections into a humanitarian emergency. The report says the conflict has left vast swaths of Khartoum in ruins, while up to 90% of hospitals in the hardest-hit regions are no longer operational. When clean water disappears and medical sites are closed, treatment depends on whether patients can reach the few functioning centers in time. The disease is therefore moving through a city that has already lost much of the normal system needed to stop it.
