In Sudan, attacks on hospitals force patients to make dangerous journeys — SkimNews
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- Tom Catena has run Mother of Mercy, the Nuba Mountains' largest hospital, for over a decade and serves as the region's only permanent surgeon, treating cancer patients alongside wounded civilians because hospitals in Khartoum, Darfur, and El Obeid have been destroyed.
- Sudan's civil war, which began in 2023, has displaced 13 million people and prompted 205 attacks on health facilities, with the WHO reporting that 37% of the country's healthcare centers have been destroyed, according to the UN and Doctors Without Borders.
- Fatouma Mahdi Ahmed Saeed sold a calf and traveled hundreds of miles from Nyala in South Darfur through South Sudan to reach Mother of Mercy for cervical cancer treatment, subsisting on flour and avoiding drone strikes at checkpoints along the way.
- Mother of Mercy administered roughly 15 chemotherapy doses in a single day despite having no oncologist on staff, and must send biopsy samples to the United States where results can take up to six months to return.
- Ifrah Ahmed, a 10-year-old with osteosarcoma, had her leg amputated at the hip at Mother of Mercy after traveling by rickshaw from Babanusa in West Kordofan, where the local health system has broken down.
- The Rapid Support Forces allied with the SPLM-N last year, turning the Nuba Mountains into an RSF staging ground and making the route to Catena's hospital more dangerous for the patients who depend on it.
Why it matters: Sudan was once a regional leader in cancer care, but a 2025 Global Oncology paper confirms that chemotherapy medication and essential supply chains have been disrupted by conflict — the nearest cancer-capable hospital to Mother of Mercy is 700 miles away in Port Sudan, across an active frontline. With 37% of health centers destroyed and 560,000 cancer deaths recorded across Africa in 2022, the collapse forces patients with chronic, non-combat illnesses into the same casualty pipeline as war wounded.
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