Famine is “almost everywhere” in war-torn Sudan, the World Health Organization (WHO) told the BBC’s Today programme after visiting the country.
“The situation in Sudan is very alarming… the massive displacement – now the largest in the world – and of course the famine,” Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told Mishal Husain.
He said 12 million people had already been displaced, adding that attention to Sudan in the global community was “very low” and that race was a factor.
Thousands of people have died since the civil war broke out in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
“Imagine devastation, displacement, disease everywhere and now famine,” Dr Tedros told the BBC.
He said he had recently visited a camp for displaced people and a hospital in Sudan.
“You see a lot of children there, skin and bones, emaciated.”
According to Dr. Tedros, nearly 25 million people, half of Sudan’s population, “need support”.
He stressed that Sudan “is not getting the attention it deserves”, as was the case with other recent conflicts in Africa.
“I think race plays a role here. That’s what I feel now. We’re seeing the pattern now.”
Dr Tedros, who grew up during the war in Ethiopia, said: “I think, especially in Africa, the attention is really, really low.”
“That’s the sad thing, because you see it over and over again, not just in Sudan,” he added.
“I know the smell of war, the sight of war, the sound of war,” the WHO chief said.
“It helps me understand how it affects others. I remember my mother praying that I would survive every day. As a child, surviving the day was a big thing. I see the same thing in Sudan and Gaza.”
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Dr Tedros said the world does not “pay equal attention to the lives of black and white people”.
He then pointed out that only a fraction of aid to Ukraine was spent on other humanitarian crises. Tigray in Ethiopia, Yemen, Afghanistan and Syria did not receive the same treatment.
Dr Tedros urged mainstream media to pay more attention to Sudan, describing the situation there as a “tragedy”.
In August, a UN-backed commission of experts declared a famine in a camp housing about 500,000 displaced people near the besieged town of El-Fasher in Darfur, one of the regions hardest hit by the conflict.
Sudanese army leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF chief Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo jointly staged a coup in 2021 but subsequently fell out, plunging Sudan into civil war last year.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is accused of supporting the RSF with money and weapons, which it denies. Saudi Arabia is also said to have close ties with the Sudanese government.
Several mediation attempts, mediated by Saudi Arabia and the US, have failed to end the conflict.
