World's only research centre for flesh-eating infection ransacked in Sudan

Yahoo

28-04-2025

The footage sent Dr Ahmed Fahal into shock. On the outskirts of Khartoum, his research centre had been completely ransacked – the reception burned, the laboratory stripped, and four decades of biobank samples destroyed.
'I'm not sure when it took place… but we discovered the damage two weeks ago,' he told the Telegraph from Cairo, where he fled when a brutal civil war broke out in Sudan in April 2023.
'[When I saw the video], I was not able to start or to talk or to communicate with anybody. All this time I had believed the centre was safe – but now we found this. It's a really sad, sad story,' he said.
Dr Fahal heads the Mycetoma Research Centre in Sudan, the world's only specialist facility treating and researching the flesh-eating infection.
But it's become yet another victim of the country's conflict, in a 'major blow' for efforts to tackle the disease.
'I don't know how to describe the kind of set back it has provided,' said Dr Borna Nyaoke-Anoke, head of mycetoma at the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi). 'It's devastating.'
The Mycetoma Research Centre after the ransacking
Mycetoma, dubbed a neglected tropical disease by the World Health Organization (WHO), can be caused by roughly 70 different bacteria and fungi found in soil. These burrow into minor cuts and scrapes, most commonly among farmers and herdsmen who toil without shoes.
The slow-moving infection then causes massive swelling, peppering patients with lesions and sores as it attacks their bodies. It can lead to disability, amputation and – in severe cases – death. Data remains patchy, but experts estimate that there are around 20,000 new cases every year.
'It affects the poorest of the poor in remote communities,' said Dr Fahal. 'Eventually mycetoma destroys their soft tissue, their bones, and can kill the patients. It eats their bones and ends their lives.'
It is now 34 years since Dr Fahal, frustrated at the lack of treatment available for those affected, launched the Mycetoma Research Centre at the University of Khartoum with 'zero budget and minimum support'.
Since then, the facility has grown to treat roughly 12,000 patients every year, and became a WHO collaborating centre in 2015. People travelled from as far away as Yemen to access free care at the facility – which broke the mould by closely following patients after treatment and offering vocational training for those who lost livelihoods due to mycetoma-related disabilities.
The ransacked offices of Mycetoma Research Centre
With around 50 Sudanese and international researchers, it has also become a critical research hub – only five months ago, it published the first randomised, double blind trial looking at new mycetoma drugs.
But the civil war has wrought havoc on operations.
When conflict broke out in April 2023, staff had to flee Khartoum, which was then at the epicentre of the war. They have been tracking patients through WhatsApp, and set up temporary operations in Wad Madani – before fleeing to Sanga and then Kassala as the conflict shifted and spread. But far fewer patients have been treated, while the next stage of various research projects were halted.
All this time Dr Fahal and his team – unable to access Khartoum – were optimistic that the facility was still standing, and that they could resume research once the capital was recaptured, which took place in March.
Instead, staff returning for the first time a fortnight ago found their facility completely ransacked, with the reception and laboratory burned, ceilings collapsed and high-tech equipment destroyed.
In the long run, the biggest blow is the loss of 40 years of samples – a unique biobank unmatched anywhere in the world.
'It had very rare types of fungi and bacteria, some of them reported on for the first time – we had 700 fungi and 1,000 samples of bacteria, collected over 40 years… [as well as] a lot of DNA extracted from blood samples,' said Dr Fahal.
'So this is the saddest story because this is a very, very, very, valuable biological material for research.'
Prof Trudie Lang, a professor of global health research at the University of Oxford and head of the Global Health Network, added: 'Sudan has brilliant scientists, doing incredibly important work and Dr Fahal's remarkable efforts in mycetoma is an exemplar of this.
'The research centre was doing vital work to tackling this disease and contributing unique evidence to the global research community… [I] hope Dr Fahal can get this back on track.'
Dr Nyaoke-Anoke added that organisations should come together to help rebuild the centre, but warned the incident should also be a 'wake up call' for the global community not to rely on a single facility to research and treat any given disease.
Two weeks after the initial shock, Dr Fahal is determined not to give up.
'We started in 1991 with zero budget,' he said. 'It is our job now to think how we can rebuild this centre and work together. Really, these patients need to be supported.'
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