Saving Lives Through Learning: How Sudan’s Education Sector Responded to Cholera

Amid one of Sudan’s most severe crises in recent history, a nationwide cholera outbreak unfolded against a backdrop of conflict, displacement, and the collapse of basic services. In this exceptionally constrained environment, the education sector mobilised rapidly. Teachers, schools, and Education Cluster partners leveraged their trusted presence and community networks to deliver lifesaving health and hygiene information—reaching children and families with age appropriate lifesaving learning.

This blog summarises key insights from a rapid case study of the 2025 cholera response in Sudan, documenting how education actors contributed to prevention and response, what worked well, the constraints they faced, and the actions needed to embed education within integrated, multisector emergency responses.

The Crisis—and the Education Landscape

Since July 2024, Sudan has reported more than 83,000 suspected cholera cases and over 2,100 deaths, with 32,000 new cases between January and July 2025. The outbreak has spread to 16 of 18 states, with the heaviest caseloads in Khartoum, Aj Jazirah, Gedaref, and White Nile. Health infrastructure has been devastated—over 70% of facilities in Khartoum were non-functional by July 2025—while insecurity and flooding further contaminated water sources and restricted access to treatment.

The education system has also been heavily disrupted. Following widespread school closures in April 2023, roughly 65% of schools were operational by November 2025 (serving about 7.5 million learners). Non-formal education remains limited, reaching only 1–2% of out-of-school children. Despite these constraints, schools and teachers continue to function as trusted community anchors—often the only consistent institutions in many localities.

What Education Actors Did

Education Cluster partners, community-based organisations, and teachers responded quickly—often without additional funding—by adapting existing education programming to support and extend health and WASH efforts across states such as North and Central Darfur, White Nile, River Nile, and Sennar. Their actions included:

• Risk communication and hygiene promotion: Teachers and volunteers delivered awareness sessions in schools, IDP camps, markets, and mosques using participatory, child-friendly methods—drama, songs, peer learning, and posters—supported by mobile loudspeakers and social media.
• School-based sanitation and supplies: School cleaning and disinfection campaigns, establishment of handwashing facilities, and hygiene kit distribution, often paired with live demonstrations on water treatment and safe storage.
• Community mobilisation: Schools acted as hubs for neighbourhood clean-ups, water-source protection, and minor infrastructure repairs, linking local initiative with formal health/WASH interventions.
• Integrated delivery: Where organisations had mandates across education, WASH, and health, teams coordinated latrine rehabilitation, water upgrades, and referrals, aligning school-based messaging with activities of Cholera Treatment Units and local authorities.

Why Education Added Unique Value

• Schools as convening spaces: Learning spaces—formal schools and Safe Learning Spaces (SLS)—are safe, familiar community hubs for distributing materials, staging demonstrations, and hosting multi-sector services. Even when schools temporarily closed to reduce risk, they reopened as platforms to reinforce prevention behaviours.
• Teachers as trusted messengers: Ustaz are among the most respected figures in many communities. With brief training and adapted guidance, teachers translated technical messages into age-appropriate, culturally relevant learning activities. Their credibility helped engage caregivers, elders, and religious leaders, and sustained behaviour change.
• Education as a platform for lifesaving messaging: Participatory, child-centred approaches (songs, plays, peer clubs) improved comprehension and retention, enabling children to act as conduits of accurate information to siblings and caregivers. Daily routines and repeated reinforcement helped bridge the “knowledge–practice gap” seen in one-off campaigns.

Challenges that Shaped the Response

• Insecurity and damaged infrastructure: Attacks, looting, and collapsed school facilities limited the sustainability and geographic scope of interventions, especially in Darfur.
• Underfunding and logistics: Many actions were delivered without new resources or incentives for frontline teachers, constraining scale and consistency.
• Siloed planning and reporting: Distinct indicators and reporting pathways across clusters led to under-counting of education contributions and missed opportunities for joint planning and scale-up.
• Inconsistent terminology and measurement: “Awareness sessions,” RCCE/SBC activities, and hygiene promotion were defined differently across sectors, complicating aggregation, comparison, and accountability.

Key Findings

• Education actors responded swiftly and flexibly, extending the reach of health and WASH interventions through trusted networks and age-appropriate methods.
• Schools and teachers served as credible, accessible platforms for lifesaving skills and psychosocial stability.
• Sectoral silos and limited joint indicators constrained coordination, visibility, and evidence of combined impact.

Recommendations

The research emphasises integrated approaches that strengthen the overall humanitarian response by recognising education as a core component of emergency preparedness and response—alongside health and WASH. Priority actions include:

• Leverage teachers’ social capital: Recognise and support teachers as key first responders. Ensure they have the information and materials needed to deliver health messaging effectively while maintaining their primary educational role.
• Recognise education’s role in contextualising and adapting information: Use educational techniques to design and disseminate age-appropriate, locally relevant resources for health and hygiene in and outside schools, reflecting local norms around water use, food sharing, and social practices.
• Empower children as change agents: Promote peer-to-peer and interactive learning so children can communicate accurate health information to siblings, parents, and communities, extending reach to households marginalised from formal health systems.
• Institutionalise coordination: Formally integrate education into inter-cluster preparedness and response mechanisms related to lifesaving actions. Establish joint Education–Health–WASH task forces and shared planning to reduce duplication and extend outreach, especially where schools are the only functioning institutions.
• Measure what matters: Develop and adopt indicators that capture both reach and behavioural change—and that track, and therefore incentivise, joint or integrated action across sectors.

The Bottom Line

Recognising schools as part of the frontline response affirms that education directly contributes to saving lives and sustaining community trust during crises. Sudan’s experience shows that when education is integrated—through trusted teachers, familiar school spaces, and child-centred methods—it multiplies the effectiveness of health and WASH interventions and strengthens community resilience.

About the Authors:

Dr Lisa Walker is an education in emergencies specialist with over 15 years’ experience supporting children and teachers. She has led and advised programmes in Sudan, Palestine, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, and Jordan. As an Education Adviser to the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office through Palladium’s Humanitarian Stabilisation and Operations Team, she supported the British Office Sudan to strengthen sector technical assistance, advancing conflict‑sensitive, inclusive system strengthening, teacher professional development, and continuity of quality learning.

Karin Alexander is a political economist and development professional with 19 years of experience working on governance and accountability issues across diverse, often fragile and transitional contexts. She is the Governance and Accountability Lead at FHI 360 UK and has served as a political economy adviser on a range of UK-funded adaptive programmes, with strengths in applied analysis, the design of adaptive strategic frameworks, and the establishment and growth of politically smart research and implementation teams.