Seventeen million kids in Sudan need aid – more than every UK child | World | News

Why doesn’t anyone seem to care? This is the question I continue to ask myself after visiting Sudan. Sudan, which has suffered more than three years of brutal conflict, has become the world’s largest displaced child crisis, yet remains one of the least talked about. The war has devastated cities, collapsed basic services and forced millions of people from their homes. But beyond brief headlines, it struggles to engage in the global debate.

The numbers are absolutely staggering; 5 million children had to leave their homes, and 17 million are in need of assistance. Education, a roof over their heads, a safe place to sleep and food to eat; These are the basic things every child should have. To put this into perspective, that’s more than all the children in the UK being deprived of these basic things, can you imagine? But the crisis has received only 16% of the funding it needs for relief this year, and there has been little global interest. These are kids like you and me, and they deserve the same chance in life.

I traveled the country for seven days, seeing the lifesaving work of Save the Children and meeting families struggling to survive the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. One of the things that stuck with me was the children I met in a hospital in Khartoum. Many had been injured by explosive weapons, a growing and destructive feature of this conflict. While walking through the hospital, we encounter Dr Jamal. A surgeon who has remained in the city since the outbreak of war in 2023.

“Most of the patients we received from the first days of the war were children. They were the majority of the injured,” he told me. At one point, the facility found itself on the front line, receiving an influx of patients seriously injured during the conflict. Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed in the war so far, making it one of the deadliest wars in the world. “There are very serious injuries due to shelling, drone strikes and shelling. Many do not survive,” says Dr Jamal.

At its peak, the hospital was admitting 150 patients a day; people were being treated in corridors, on the ground, and even outside. Many are children. Two doctors and two security guards lost their lives in bombardments and drone attacks. He said the hospital was hit four times during the height of the fighting.

This follows a pattern in which more than 200 health facilities have been attacked and destroyed across the country, according to WHO, and possibly hundreds more have been attacked and destroyed due to funding shortages. It leaves thousands of people in the middle of conflict, with nowhere to access basic healthcare.

“We don’t have what we need; even oxygen and basic equipment are barely met,” says Dr Jamal. He pointed to the ceiling of the office and said that it had been bombed four times and they could not repair it.

As we wander the corridors of the dimly lit hospital, we come to a small room where two boys are sitting on separate beds with their parents. Dr Jamal introduces them one by one, explains who they are, where they come from and the surgeries performed. When we meet, 15-year-old Bilal looks up and I immediately notice the scar on the right side of his face and how one eye does not immediately follow the other. When I looked down, I noticed that part of his right arm was also missing.

Dr Jamal then introduces Bilal’s 19-year-old cousin Karim, who is sitting across the room and wearing a black hood. As we talk, he pulls it back to reveal a severe scar and missing parts of his ear. While we were talking, we learned that both children were injured in the same incident.

They were out farming with their father when Bilal discovered a shiny object in the soil. While he was doing this, his cousin knew what it was and tried to pull his cousin away from danger. The device exploded instantly. He seriously injured both boys. They were brought to the hospital and treated by Dr Jamal. After several surgeries, they managed to save most of Bilal’s arm, but he lost his hand and eye. His cousin Karim was seriously injured in the skull, is now deaf, and has lost part of his left ear.

“When it exploded, it threw me into the air and my hand was torn off.” says Bilal.

Save the Children helped them receive emergency medical treatment and ongoing care during their recovery. This included supporting his treatment in hospital, as well as providing meals and care for the family during their stay. Unfortunately, theirs is not an isolated story.

Across Sudan, explosive weapons are leaving a devastating mark on civilians. Thousands of people have been injured since the conflict began; Reports from Action Against Gun Violence show that the number of casualties from explosive weapons in 2025 is twice as high as in 2023. We also know that children are particularly vulnerable, on average seven times more likely to die from blast injuries.

But these are not battlefield injuries. These things happen to children. While playing with their friends, walking home from school, or at home with their family. We then walk a short distance down the hall and meet 15-year-old Meryem, whose story is the most heartbreaking yet inspiring.

He sits on a bed with his parents, his feet still bandaged. He underwent multiple surgeries to repair his legs, which were shattered in a drone strike. In 2024, during the height of the conflict in Khartoum, she was walking home from a local market with her sister.

“I was walking with my sister when a drone hit. We didn’t hear anything. I lost consciousness and when I woke up I was told she had been killed,” he says. Meryem was left with serious injuries. They took his sister’s body to the hospital and his father buried her that day.

He spent the next six months in the hospital and underwent multiple surgeries on his legs before he could walk again. While clashes continue in the city. Meryem has already undergone two major surgeries and is facing at least two more. Save the Children provides him with ongoing psychosocial support and care.

Despite the long and painful recovery process, Meryem* remains determined. He missed two years of school due to his injuries but is now back in the classroom. Before the attack, he dreamed of becoming a doctor. This dream has not changed. He says he wants to help people in the future, just as the doctors who treated him helped save his life.

And that’s what stays with you. It’s not just the scale of the crisis, but also the very foundations of childhood that are being taken away from us. School. Safety. A future that every child deserves. No child should have to learn to walk again. No child should have to go through this. Yet there are millions of people in Sudan and there seems to be no end in sight.

The reality is that crises like Sudan have become normalized, underfunded, and the world moves on. But we can’t let this happen. Join our campaign, write to your MP and defend Sudan.

(Children’s names have been changed)

Visit savethechildren.org.uk/how-you-can-help/emergegency/sudan-crisis