EMERGENCY’s Paediatric Centre In Port Sudan: The Only Hospital In One Of The Poorest Areas Of The City.

At our Paediatric Centre in Port Sudan, the only hospital located in one of the poorest areas of the city, we offer free and high-quality care to children up to the age of 14.   

Port Sudan is situated along the shore of the Red Sea, and hosts Sudan’s most important harbour. Living conditions are very difficult, mainly due to inefficient infrastructure and services, which have worsened as a result of the pandemic and the severe economic crisis the country is experiencing.   

Facilities like our Paediatric Centre are therefore essential to guarantee the right to care. 

Clinical activities at the Paediatric Centre

During more than 10 years of activity, we have performed over 200,000 outpatient visits and admitted more than 11,000 patients.   

Of the approximately 1,200 children we admitted to our hospital in 2021, almost half suffered from the effects of severe or acute malnutrition, a very common problem in the area. That is why, in addition to treating patients affected by this condition, we offer health information sessions dedicated to parents, helping them protect the health of their children through preventive medicine.  

Outdoor Activities: Preventive Medicine

The Port Sudan Paediatric Centre’s health educators also work outside the Paediatric Centre, through our outreach programme. They visit communities in the area, inform mothers about key topics such as vaccinations to be carried out, good practices that minimise the risk of contracting malaria and other infectious diseases, and explain how to ensure their children have a balanced diet with what they have available.   

The outreach programme also includes a nurse from the centre, who identifies children in need of care: each case of severe malnutrition with complications is immediately transferred to our facility to check their condition and assess whether they need to be hospitalised. 

Children suffering from malnutrition who do not need urgent hospitalisation are referred to the ‘Feeding Centre’, where they will be clinically followed up and receive special foods that guarantee them an adequate food supply.   

In the health education sessions we also involve the children themselves, thanks to large colourful pictures, stories, games and songs that encourage their attention and allow us to talk to them about proper nutrition, careful hand washing, and prevention. In this way, they too learn how to prevent the risks of infectious diseases and how to take care of their own health, through simple techniques that they can put into practice even in a low-resource environment such as the one in which they are growing up. 

The Paediatric Centre in Port Sudan is co-funded by the European Union