Multi-sectorial Health, WASH, and Protection emergency response to West Darfur's crisis Intercommunal conflict and violence commenced on 15 January late evening in Krinding Camp, near El Geneina town and quickly spread across West Darfur.  In the days following, there has been continued clashes within the town and attacks in villages across multiple localities, destroying thousands of homes and creating further displacement into El Geneina, neighbouring Krenik and Beida localities and into Chad.  Intercommunal conflict has also extended into South Darfur, East Darfur and Central Darfur.  With hundreds dead and injured, at least 97,000 people internally displaced within West Darfur. There are severe and immediate life-saving needs and protection risks to be addressed.
SC has launched a multi-sectoral response to address the immediate life-threatening and protection needs of the displaced population, and to support transition to life-sustaining humanitarian intervention – focused on the health, WASH and protection sectors.  
There are critical shortages of medical staff and drugs whilst there is a massively increased caseload in El Geneina caused by the displacement.  Infants’ vaccination schedules have been disrupted, as will be OTP service provision for those requiring nutrition intervention whilst the health risks are heightened, as displaced populations live in unsanitary and overcrowded conditions within spontaneous gathering sites, and with more limited access to food as families fled without their stocks and have competing needs to spend their money on.  SC will support the MoH scale-up the delivery of quality primary healthcare services including dressing service, vaccinations for infants, OTP services, and reproductive health across multiple gathering points, through the establishment of mobile and static clinics at displacement locations secondment of staff provision of training and capacity-building support to healthcare workers (men and women) and direct provision of essential medicines, medical supplies, kits and equipment to men, women, girls and boys.  SC will also strengthen referrals to secondary and more specialized health services, and engage in risk communication on the key health risks, including COVID-19.  
Water supply, although present at many gathering points within El Geneina, needs to be increased along with water storage capacity to cater for the daily minimum need of 7.5 litres per person per day. There are insufficient latrines and most of them need rehabilitating. The lack of proper and gender-segregated hygiene facilities represents a hazard in terms of protection against SGBV, and open defecation practices have been witnessed, which pose a real risk to water sources and the overall hygiene conditions of the population. SC will focus within this project on improving the hygiene and sanitation conditions at targeted gathering points through water trucking, Provision of water purifications, hygiene promotion and capacity building to community volunteers (men and women), and solid waste collection. Aside from the trauma associated with witnessing or experiencing violence and being suddenly displaced from homes, family separation and insecure shelter without privacy, plus a lack of material resources, exposes children and vulnerable adults to multiple forms of violence, abuse, exploitation, and neglect. These conditions also increase risks of SGBV to women and girls. SC will support the establishment and strengthening of community-based protection assistance networks, which will aim to mitigate the protection risks within their environments, raise awareness, and identify protection concerns. SC will undertake widespread protection monitoring across the gathering points, feeding back the key risks and concerns identified by communities, and will seek to strengthen referral pathways for Child Protection and SGBV. SC will PFA and MHPSS to identified high-need individuals.