Far from fighting, Catholic hospital helps Sudan’s suffering

A Catholic medical center in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains is far from the conflict zones in the country’s 14-month-old civil war. Still, Mother of Mercy Hospital is feeling the war’s devastating effects and struggling to provide help and hope for victims of the fighting.

Those victims suffer in a variety of ways.

Mother of Mercy is the only hospital in a 300-mile radius, and is no stranger to war. With New York native Dr. Tom Catena leading the medical team since 2007, Mother of Mercy has been a place of refuge and healing during previous conflicts.

Now, Mother of Mercy is receiving refugees from Khartoum, Darfur and other parts of Sudan where people are fleeing war and near-famine conditions.

“We've had a lot of people coming to the hospital looking for food, looking for work,” Dr. Catena told Aleteia. “We've had a big uptick in our malnutrition cases. A couple weeks ago, we had about 30 children in our nutrition unit, and we normally have around six. A lot of adults are malnourished. Within the Nuba Mountains, there are pockets of level-five food insecurity, which is the worst level: people are dying of hunger. And for greater Sudan, we're probably better off in most places because there's not a lot of active fighting in our local area.”

The relative peace is one reason why Gidel, where Mother of Mercy is located, is seeing so many Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), fleeing from conflict areas. But that puts a huge strain on the local economy – and the hospital. Because of the war, which began April 15, 2023, Sudan has already suffered from a poor harvest last year, with bombing of agricultural areas and farmers being called up for military service. Things look just as bleak for this year’s harvest, and prices in the market have been skyrocketing. 

“There are around 700,000 IDPs within the Nuba Mountains, and they're in pretty in big camps,” Catena said. A nearby IDP camp has doubled in size in just two months, he said.

While most displaced persons stay in such camps, some have relatives to lodge with for a while. “Some would have family members that they're staying with, but those families are already stressed, because the harvest last year was poor,” Catena said. 

Catena is the only full-time physician at the hospital, which has about 480 beds and a staff of 230. Lately, the hospital has been over-capacity, with two patients to a bed in some cases. Much of the staff is quite stressed, said hospital matron Sister Anita Cecilia.

Sister Anita, who is a Comboni missionary from Uganda, oversees the nursing care.

Malnutrition is a major issue in Nuba, as it is throughout all of Sudan. The humanitarian organization Save the Children reported last week that the number of children in Sudan facing severe food shortages has almost doubled in six months, with about 75% of children now going hungry daily as conflict drives hunger levels to record levels.

For children with malnutrition, Catena and his team monitor for acute illness and treat any underlying bacterial infection they might have. 

He said North Kingstown, Rhode Island-based Edesia, a company that makes it, has been donating Plumpy'Nut to the hospital for the past several years. 

But some of the kids are “just too far gone” when they come to the hospital, Catena said, and succumb.

Stories of people escaping the present conflict abound, including a woman who was a cleaner in a hospital in Khartoum whose daughter was raped in front of her as they escaped, or a family who escaped from Darfur through the bush and whose children became ill along the way. They heard about Mother of Mercy in the Nuba Mountains, but by the time they got there one of the children had already died.

But local families also suffer from war. One way is a result of a combination of the war, the terrible economy, and the opportunity that some men see in the situation. With many men away fighting at the front lines, wives are left to take care of their families by themselves. 

“So sometimes [a woman] is abused, because a person who is able to provide something for her takes advantage of her,” Sister Anita said. Any children that result face a very uncertain, and sometimes tragic, future, either being abandoned or outright killed. 

The problem is “a bit rampant,” said Sister Anita, who had just come back from burying one such newborn the morning she spoke with Aleteia. 

Girls, too, who need to pay for their education, are also subject to potential abuse by men who come along and offer “help,” she said. 

In spite of the difficulties, Mother of Mercy pushes on. Dr. Catena speaks of the help he gets from a medical student who was displaced from Khartoum and an Australian missionary doctor who splits her time between seeing patients and teaching in a new school at the hospital training physician assistants and nurse midwives. He’s looking forward to getting two new doctors at the end of the year, one of whom is finishing up at a medical school in the US, and another who is going to medical school in South Sudan. 

Both, he points out, are originally from Nuba.

Kocho Adam Ali, also from Nuba, studied abroad as well. He recalled that his father fought in the military when he himself was a small child, about 35 years ago. After his studies, he went back home to become administrator of Mother of Mercy. That was six years ago.