While the fighting has plunged Sudan into massive Chaos, one of the major concerns of the fighting was that the rebels have forcefully taken over the National Public Health Laboratory.
Ever since the intense fighting started in Sudan on 15 April 2023, its capital Khartoum has been the epicenter of intense fighting. While official figures indicate over a few hundred dead, unofficial numbers are many times higher than that. In the last two weeks, government forces under Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) are fighting with the paramilitary forces of the country who have since turned rebel as Rapid Support Force (RSF). Most of the foreign nationals and diplomats have been evacuated from Sudan and the country is now left at the mercy of these two warring factions.
While the fighting has plunged Sudan into massive chaos, one of the major concerns of the fighting was that the rebels have forcefully taken over the National Public Health Laboratory, one of the important centers for disease control and research on epidemics in Africa. National Public Health Laboratory was established in 1992 and since then was instrumental in carrying out several research projects with the help of western funding. In 2012, the World Health Organization (WHO) started supporting it and enhanced its research capabilities to a very large extent. Today, it is one of the major research centers for pathogens in entire Africa. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this laboratory successfully carried out genome mapping, testing and research on COVID-19 virus.