Clean water tanks for 3,000 people displaced in North Darfur

One working handpump for four sites

Around three thousand people have settled across four informal sites outside the town over the last five months, having moved two or three times before arriving. Between the four sites there is one functioning handpump. The rest of the water comes from two open sources that are also used by livestock, and from whatever can be carried.

Cholera was confirmed in a settlement forty kilometres away three weeks ago. In a population of this density, with this water supply and no chlorination, an outbreak is not a possibility to be managed but an arithmetic problem with a date attached. Our clinical team has already treated eleven cases of acute watery diarrhoea in children under five in a fortnight.

What we are putting in

Bladder tanks and tapstands at all four sites, a chlorination point and testing regime, six months of water trucking while the borehole rehabilitation is assessed, and a hygiene programme run by people from the sites themselves. This is standard emergency water supply and there is nothing innovative about it, which is exactly the point — it works, and the reason it is not already in place is money and access, not knowledge.

• Four 10,000-litre bladder tanks with tapstands, giving 15 litres per person per day.
• Chlorination at fill and residual testing at the tap twice daily, logged and published.
• Six months of trucking from a tested source 22km away while boreholes are assessed.
• Sixty hygiene promoters recruited from the four sites and paid a daily rate.

Where the money goes

Six months of clean water for one person costs about $32. That is the arithmetic of this appeal.

• $38,400 — Six months of water trucking The largest line and the one that starts working on day one. Twenty-two kilometres each way, several trips daily.
• $21,600 — Tanks, tapstands and installation Four bladder tanks, hardstanding, drainage and forty taps, plus the plumbing to keep the run-off out of the site.
• $13,200 — Chlorination, testing and consumables Six months of chlorine, test kits and the staff time to test twice daily at every tapstand.
• $10,800 — Latrines and handwashing points Water without sanitation moves an outbreak rather than preventing one. Forty-eight latrines and twenty handwashing stations.
• $7,900 — Hygiene promotion team Sixty promoters from the four sites, paid a daily rate for four months.
• $4,800 — Borehole assessment, contingency and platform fees Surveying two existing boreholes for rehabilitation, which is the exit from trucking.

There is nothing clever in this appeal. Tanks, chlorine, taps and trucks. The reason it has not happened is not that anyone lacked the idea.

Who is behind this

Sahel Medical Relief has operated in North Darfur since 2022 through a Sudanese partner organisation whose staff are from the state and, in several cases, from the communities on these sites. All four sites are covered by our existing access arrangements. We do not have international staff on the ground here and we are not going to pretend we do; the work is done by Sudanese colleagues and our role is funding, procurement and clinical protocol.

Risks and challenges

Access is the risk and it is a serious one. The trucking route has been closed twice this year for periods of four and nine days, and there is no alternative route. If it closes for longer, the tanks become buffer storage and we ration, which is the reason we specified 10,000-litre tanks rather than smaller ones. Fuel availability and price is the second risk and the trucking line is quoted at a rate forty per cent above today's to absorb it. The honest strategic risk is that six months of trucking is a bridge, not a solution — if the borehole assessment shows rehabilitation is not viable, this population needs a different answer, and we will publish that finding whether it helps this appeal or not.