Sudan cancer patients hit by US sanctions

WASHINGTON

Sanctions imposed by the Unites States on Sudan is costing civilian lives and hurting vulnerable groups, a director of a Washington-based think tank has warned.

Dr Peter Pham, an expert on African affairs at the Atlantic Council said among those suffering from the two-decade-long sanctions are breast cancer victims.

“With the exception of the very small number of wealthy patients who can travel abroad for medical attention, the only option is the Khartoum Breast Care Centre (KBCC), a state-of-the-art non-profit hospital,” he said in a statement sent to newsrooms.

The centre uses equipment purchased from General Electric (GE) and for maintenance and support, a licence has to be procured from the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control under the current sanctions regime.

This, according to Dr Pham, affects the operation of the centre, often times leaving patients stranded without help waiting for a license to be acquired.

FULLY FUNCTIONAL

“Demand is so high that KBCC works virtually around the clock, so, when fully functional, the mammography machine screens an average of 9,600 people per year, 98 per cent of whom have no access to equivalent medical care elsewhere.”

Since 2000, cancer has jumped from the tenth to the second most common cause of death in the country. Among Sudanese women, breast cancer accounts for 35 per cent of all cancer diagnoses.

“What is undeniable is that having applied a blunt instrument at the regime, the United States has also taken a very real human toll on some vulnerable groups unfortunate enough to be caught in the middle,” he said in a statement sent to newsrooms.

Khartoum has been the target of United States sanctions for more than twenty years, which have blocked assets of the government, and interfered with trade.

The sanctions have piled up over the years: to the original set imposed by President Bill Clinton in the 1990s to punish the regime in Khartoum for its alleged support of international terrorism (Osama bin Laden lived there until 1996), additional measures were added by President George W. Bush and the US Congress a decade later in response to human rights abuses in the Darfur region.

The Obama Administration’s new National Security Strategy places an unprecedented emphasis on sanctions as an instrument of national power and has hit hard on President Omar al-Bashir’s government in Khartoum.

“Irrespective of whether that assertion is true or not, it is clear from the case of KBCC and the breast cancer patients in Sudan that significant work needs to be done to ensure ‘our sanctions will continue to be carefully designed and tailored to achieve clear aims while minimising any unintended consequences for other economic actors, the global economy, and civilian populations,’’ Dr Pham said.

“Until the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control process is streamlined, communications with applicants and other stakeholders improved, and decision-making and response times cut, America’s not-so-smart sanctions on Sudan will continue to extract an unacceptably high human cost for what is, at best, ambiguous strategic achievements,” he said.

(J. Peter Pham is Director of the Africa Centre at the Atlantic Council)