Sudan officially declared an outbreak of cholera on Saturday, August 17, after the World Health Organisation (WHO) said more than 300 people had died of disease, Xinhua reported.

"The laboratory test of watery diarrhea at the Public Health Laboratory proves it to be cholera," health minister Haitham Mohamed Ibrahim said in a statement on Saturday.

On Friday, WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris reportedly said 11,327 cholera cases with 316 deaths had been reported in Sudan, and that dengue fever and meningitis infections were also on the rise.

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Epidemic diseases such as cholera, malaria, measles and dengue fever have left hundreds dead in Sudan since the start of a war that has displaced more than 10 million people and forced 2.2 million others to seek refuge in neighbouring countries, according to the United Nations.

More than 16,000 people have been killed in the war which broke out in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).