Cholera vaccination campaign reaches 1.86 million people in Darfur amid active conflict

Story: 2025 C.E.  |  Last updated: April 20, 2026

In late September 2025 C.E., health workers launched one of the most significant public health interventions Sudan has seen in years — an oral cholera vaccination campaign targeting more than 1.86 million people across six localities in the Darfur states. Coordinated by Sudan’s Ministry of Health alongside WHO and UNICEF, the drive began in South Darfur on September 21 and quickly expanded to North Darfur, pushing vaccines into communities where ongoing conflict has made basic health services nearly impossible to sustain.

At a glance

• Cholera vaccination campaign: Over 1.86 million doses of oral cholera vaccine were mobilized for residents across six localities in the Darfur states, targeting 97% of the population in affected areas.
• Outbreak scale: Cholera has spread to all 18 states of Sudan, with more than 113,000 cases and 3,029 deaths reported since July 2024 C.E. — making this the longest cholera outbreak in the country’s recorded history.
• Global support: Vaccines were supplied by the International Cooperating Group on Vaccine Provision, with financial backing from Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, alongside operational support from UNICEF, WHO, IFRC, and Médecins Sans Frontières.

Delivering vaccines through a war zone

Getting 1.86 million doses to Darfur is not simply a logistical challenge — it is an extraordinary feat under fire. Roads are cut off. Fighting is ongoing. Basic services have collapsed across much of the region. Aid teams moved the vaccine supply through complex cross-border and cross-line operations, navigating territory where hospitals have stopped functioning and supply chains have broken down.

Cholera spreads through contaminated water and food and can kill within hours without treatment. In conditions of war and broken infrastructure, it moves fast. Sudan’s rainy season compounds the risk — flooding contaminates water points and accelerates transmission. The campaign was designed to interrupt that chain before it reached further into already devastated communities.

The decision to launch despite the security situation reflects a hard-won calculation that waiting is more dangerous than acting. WHO’s global cholera guidance consistently finds that early, proactive vaccination in crisis settings saves far more lives than reactive responses once transmission accelerates.

Training communities, not just vaccinating them

WHO and UNICEF structured the campaign to leave something behind. Rather than bringing in outside teams to administer vaccines and depart, both organizations trained local trainers, who then cascaded training down to volunteer vaccinators embedded in communities across the targeted localities.

That approach builds capacity that outlasts the campaign itself. Communities gain workers who understand the disease, the vaccine, and the hygiene practices that reduce transmission — knowledge that remains even after international organizations redirect resources elsewhere.

Community awareness drives ran alongside the vaccination rollout. Families received education on hygiene, sanitation, and clean water access. This combination — vaccines plus water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions — is the evidence-backed standard for sustaining cholera resilience. UNICEF’s Sudan emergency response has been central to getting doses and WASH supplies into some of the most dangerous, hard-to-reach areas of the country.

The outbreak behind the numbers

Sudan’s cholera outbreak began in earnest in July 2024 C.E. Since then, close to 113,629 cases and 3,029 deaths have been reported across the country’s 18 states. In South Darfur alone, the first case was reported on May 29, 2025 C.E., and the disease spread to 36 localities across all five Darfur states within months — 12,739 cases and 358 deaths in that region alone.

Two years of conflict have driven mass displacement, disrupted basic services, and created severe shortages of safe water and sanitation. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which provided financial support for this campaign, has documented how these conditions — displacement, broken infrastructure, rainy season flooding — form a near-perfect environment for waterborne disease to spread.

Children under five have carried a disproportionate burden throughout the outbreak. That pattern is consistent with cholera globally — young children face higher risk of severe dehydration and death. Protecting this age group is not only an immediate health priority. It shapes what post-conflict recovery looks like for entire communities.

What this campaign can and cannot do

There are real limits to what a vaccination drive accomplishes on its own. It cannot repair destroyed water infrastructure, reopen closed hospitals, or end the conflict that created these conditions in the first place. Médecins Sans Frontières, one of the campaign’s partners, has documented the scale of unmet need and the dangers facing health workers on the ground across Sudan. Global health partners have explicitly called for significant additional funding — needs that outpace current resources by a wide margin.

Still, the scale of this intervention matters. Reaching nearly 1.9 million people with a preventive vaccine in the middle of an active conflict demonstrates what coordinated humanitarian action can accomplish under pressure. For the people in those six localities, the campaign changes the odds in a moment when the odds have been stacked badly against them.

“The people in Darfur, and the rest of Sudan, must be protected from disease and suffering,” said Dr. Shible Sahbani, WHO Representative and Head of Mission in Sudan, “and we are here to do exactly that as we have been doing so for decades.” That kind of institutional commitment — imperfect, underfunded, and genuinely life-saving — is what this campaign represents.

Read more

For more on this story, see: WHO Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office

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