Nadra Mohamed Ahmed was seven months pregnant when she grabbed her two young children and fled her hometown of El-Fasher in Sudan’s Darfur region. Violence had intensified, and survival became a race against time.
For nearly 40 kilometres, Ahmed walked along unsafe roads, carrying her four-year-old daughter on her back and clutching her six-year-old son’s hand. With no husband—he had gone missing shortly before she escaped—she travelled with nothing to eat or drink. After days of exhaustion, she finally secured transport that took her to the displacement camps in Al-Dabbah, northern Sudan.
“By the time I arrived here, I had lost a lot of blood,” Ahmed told Prime Africa News from her tent in the overcrowded shelter. She was rushed to intensive care, where she received a blood transfusion. The ordeal came just two months before El-Fasher fell to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), who have been battling the Sudanese army for more than two years.
Pregnancies in Danger as Health System Collapses
Over 140 pregnant women have arrived in Al-Dabbah since the fall of El-Fasher, according to Tasneem Al-Amin of the Sudan Doctors Network. Many of them arrive with serious complications, particularly life-threatening hemorrhage, often resulting in miscarriage.
The crisis is unfolding as Sudan’s health infrastructure collapses. UN agencies report that 80 percent of medical facilities in conflict zones are no longer functioning, leaving thousands of women with no medical care as they try to carry their pregnancies to term.
“Sudanese women are being forced to give birth on the streets,” warned Anna Mutavati, UN Women’s Regional Director for East and Southern Africa, during a briefing last week.
For Ahmed, the medical support she found at the camp made the difference. “Thank God, there is healthcare here now,” she said, expecting her baby within days.
Surviving the Escape
Ahmed says she was forced to flee after an RSF projectile struck her home, killing her sister. “We could hardly collect my sister’s remains. It was a harrowing experience,” she recalled.
Those fleeing El-Fasher face violence even on the road to safety. Armed men stop civilians, beat them, search their belongings, and rob them, Ahmed said.
Thousands on the Move
Sami Aswad, humanitarian coordinator for the UN Population Fund in Darfur and North Sudan, says the true scale of displacement is changing too rapidly to track in real time. However, the UN estimates that more than 2,300 pregnant women have fled El-Fasher since 27 October alone.
As war continues to devastate Sudan’s health system, women like Ahmed must now endure not only pregnancy, but the trauma of conflict, displacement, and loss—hoping they can stay alive long enough to give birth.
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