Sudan’s transitional authorities are working to create a police force to protect health facilities, the prime minister’s office said Saturday, as attacks against health workers and hospitals increase amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The move came after doctors across the country threatened Thursday to go on strike to pressure authorities to provide protection for health workers and facilities.
Prime Minister met with representatives of doctors to find “decisive and strict solutions” to “the phenomenon of repeated attacks on health workers,” his office said in a statement.
The government will introduce a draft bill to provide protection to health workers, the statement said.
At least two dozen attacks on health care workers and facilities have taken place in the past two months across the country, according to a tally by the Sudan Doctors’ committee.
The group is part of the protest movement that last year helped oust former president Omar al-Bashir.
In one instance last month, a riot erupted at a hospital in the city Omdurman, across the Nile River from the capital, Khartoum, when a rumor spread that it would take coronavirus patients. Police arrested several people who tried to attack the building.
On Thursday alone, there were at least three attacks on health workers and facilities in Khartoum that led to a temporary suspension of services at a hospital there, the committee said.
Sudan has reported at least 63 deaths from COVID-19 among around 3,380 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, which causes the disease.
Sudan’s health care system has been weakened by decades of war and sanctions. The country is still reeling from last year’s uprising that toppled al-Bashir.
