Warning: This piece contains details that some readers may find distressing
Touma hasn't eaten in days. She sits silently, her eyes glassy as she stares aimlessly across the hospital ward.
In her arms, motionless and severely malnourished, lies her three-year-old daughter, Masajed.
Touma seems numb to the cries of the other young children around her. I wish she would cry, the 25-year-old mother tells us, looking at her daughter. She hasn't cried in days.
Bashaer Hospital is one of the last functioning hospitals in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, devastated by the civil war that has been raging since April 2023. Many have travelled hours to get here for specialist care.
The malnutrition ward is filled with children who are too weak to fight disease, their mothers by their bedside, helpless.
Sudan is currently experiencing one of the world's worst humanitarian emergencies.
According to the UN, three million children under the age of five are acutely malnourished. While hospitals like Bashaer offer care free of charge, the lifesaving medicines required must be paid for by families.
Touma's daughters, Masajed and Manahil, were brought to the hospital together, but due to financial constraints, only one could receive treatment. This horrific decision left Touma choosing between her children's lives.
I wish they could both recover and grow, she laments. Her voice cracks, revealing the torment of a mother watching her child suffer.
As reports emerge about children's suffering across Khartoum, it is clear that the impacts of the civil war extend far beyond the battlefield, testing the limits of human endurance in terrible ways.
Surveys within the malnutrition ward indicate that none of the children are expected to survive, underscoring the dire circumstances many families are finding themselves in due to the ongoing conflict.
