Cholera has claimed at least 40 lives in Sudan's Darfur region over the last week as the country weathers its worst outbreak of in years, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Thursday.

At a cholera isolation tent at a Sudanese displacement camp, an AFP journalist saw women and a young girl receiving intravenous fluids, while exhausted and weak patients sprawled on camp beds.

Citing rising cases of cholera which "exacerbate the worst effects of malnutrition", the European Union called on all parties to "urgently" allow in international aid.

Medical charity MSF said the vast western region, which has been a major battleground over more than two years of fighting between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, had been hardest hit by the year-old outbreak.

"On top of an all-out war, people in Sudan are now experiencing the worst cholera outbreak the country has seen in years," MSF said in a statement.

"In the Darfur region alone, MSF teams treated over 2,300 patients and recorded 40 deaths in the past week."

The NGO said 2,470 cholera-related deaths had been reported in the year to August 11, out of 99,700........

© Al Monitor