Sudan, the Italian Emergency manager speaks: “Difficult to move but we are not in danger ”

Khartoum has been in chaos since tonight due to a coup d’état, but for Italian and foreign personnel “there is not the slightest sense of danger”, only “concern for a country, Sudan, which is going through a very economic crisis. important “and for the risk that” such an episode “aggravates it. This was stated in an interview with Adnkronos by the country director of Emergency in Sudan, Luca Rolla, underlining that “absolutely” none of the Italian and international NGOs present in the country is a target of the protest. “We are calm and our work goes on”, he specifies. Rolla then highlights how Emergency’s Salam heart surgery center is far from the central areas of Khartoum where protests are usually held, underlining above all the difficulties encountered in these hours in getting around the capital. “Tonight’s episode undoubtedly led to a presence of police and military checkpoints and the closure of the bridges that connect the various areas of Khartoum,” he says. This has caused great difficulties for the Sudanese staff living in the capital to reach the Salam Center, which is located in Soba, 20 kilometers south of the Sudanese capital, not even in the areas where the other Emergency hospitals in Sudan are located, in Nyala ( Darfur) and Port Sudan, “there were protests – he specifies – Our colleagues went to work even if obviously the flow of patients is lower. But there was no problem”. Due to the fact that most of the staff failed to reach the Salam Center, explains the head of Emergency, it was necessary “to reorganize the shifts, partly with nurses and doctors who managed to arrive and partly with the staff present for the night shift”. The Center is currently at its maximum capacity, with around 60 patients, 12 of whom are in intensive care. “We are making rotations to ensure patient care”, assures Rolla, according to whom “today we have not started the routine activity and the operating room is ready only for emergencies.” “Such a situation obviously falls within the exceptionality but the our hospitals are open “, concludes the head of Emergency, recalling that even in the recent period of instability, or after the fall of the Bashir government in 2019,” our centers have operated normally in the country “because” we are recognized as an important and fundamental aid to the national health system “.