Airstrikes on a hospital in South Sudan highlight the growing assault on women’s health and humanitarian space
Thought piece by: Shudu Musida, UNFPA Global Champion
In the still hours before dawn, while the world slept and Old Fangak lay cloaked in silence, the sky fell on the most vulnerable.
Without warning, airstrikes tore through the early morning calm, hitting a hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the only secondary health facility for more than 40,000 people in this remote corner of South Sudan. Seven lives were taken. Twenty more were injured. In an instant, a place of healing became a site of death and devastation.
For UNFPA, this hospital was more than a partner facility. It was a referral point for our mobile team delivering emergency obstetric and newborn care. It was where women could deliver safely with skilled birth attendants, where girls could seek care and shelter, where rape survivors could access clinical management of rape (CMR) services, and where reproductive health kits, the basic tools of dignity and survival, were used daily.
Now, the mobile team has been evacuated and our GBV prevention and response project has been interrupted. Two local implementing partners, Smile Again Africa Development Organization (SAADO) and Health Link South Sudan (HLSS), have pulled their staff to safety by riverboat. And services for women and girls, including survivors of gender-based violence, have ground to a halt.
There were no casualties among our team or the women and girls they serve. But the wound runs deep. For women already walking for days to access care, for adolescent girls already navigating layers of insecurity, and for exhausted midwives holding the line, this is not just a disruption but more of a breaking point.
The United Nations has strongly condemned the attack. “The UN deplores an air strike on a hospital in Old Fangak, South Sudan,” said the Acting Humanitarian Coordinator Marie-Helene Verney. “The destruction of critical health infrastructure and continued fighting puts innocent South Sudanese lives at risk.” Verney went on to warn that “people in these areas are already battling flooding, food shortages and disease.” And now, this.
What makes this moment even more harrowing is the context. This airstrike follows recent attacks on health facilities in Nasir and Ulang in Upper Nile State.
We cannot let this become the new normal especially in the country where 2.4 million women of reproductive age out of 9.3 million in need of humanitarian assistance
Health care is not a target. It is a lifeline, protected under international humanitarian law. The idea that women in labor must now fear the skies above them is not just unconscionable, it is unlawful, it is inhumane.
In Old Fangak, the hospital was the only facility with capacity to provide comprehensive emergency obstetric and newborn care including emergency cesarean sections. It served malnourished children, women with fistula, victims of sexual violence. Now, those seeking help must either flee or wait. Should it be waiting for calm, for care, or for the next airstrike?
This is not just South Sudan’s story. It reflects a larger, disturbing pattern of shrinking humanitarian space, of blurred lines in conflict, and of indifference to the rights of civilians.
UNFPA is working closely with partners to assess damage and restore services as soon as conditions allow. We are engaging in inter-agency discussions, including with WHO and the Health Cluster, on a collective response and public positioning. But more urgently, we are calling for accountability for an investigation, for protection guarantees, and for a renewed commitment to keep health care out of the crossfire.
Because no woman should have to choose between bleeding to death in childbirth and running through gunfire to seek help.
Because no midwife should have to hide when her only weapon is compassion.
And because every time a hospital is hit, we are reminded that silence is not neutrality, it is complicity.
Old Fangak and other humanitarian sites are toiling the bells for help. We cannot just respond in mourning but in action.
