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Ugandan Doctors Aid Victims of Sudan's Civil War


Ugandan Doctors Aid Victims of Sudan's Civil War
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In Sudan's state of South Kordofan, the number of amputees as result of civil war is in the thousands, but few have access to sufficient medical help.

A small team of Ugandan doctors has been providing remote help, producing new prosthetic limbs for those in need.

In Sudan's Nuba mountains civilians are trapped in the middle of a conflict. Government forces have staged thousands of aerial attacks since 2011.

Mother of Mercy hospital is the only fully functional medical facility in the Nuba mountains. Wards are over crowded. Beds line corridors, transforming them into makeshift wards.

Injured in air attack

Nine-year-old Rabe Mohammed was injured in an aerial attack and lost his right leg.

He is able to walk again because he was given a new prosthetic leg as part of a program run by a small team of Ugandan doctors. Rabe has already made drastic improvements, walking without the aid of a crutch for the first time in almost a year.

Prosthetic technician Simon Peter said Rabe's parents were away when the bomb fell on his house.

“So when they bombed ... they hit the house, and they cut off the right leg,” he said.

Peter said most victims in the Nuba Mountains were middle-aged men.

“Thirty-five [to] 40 and these are active people they meet problems when they go to look for food for their families. As a man, and most of them [amputees] are men, they go they try to defend there families first, in this process they meet sometimes, gunshots or maybe land mines,” he said.

When Rabe was injured, it took his parents hours to reach the hospital. Many people have to travel as far as 200 kilometers to receive treatment, this can take days and mean the difference between life and death. Rabe was lucky.

The project works to get help to those in the most remote areas.

With no facilities to produce prosthetic limbs inside the region, doctors take a cast and limbs are produced outside the country.

Thousands injured

An estimated 50,000 people are disabled as a result of the conflict in Sudan. South Kordofan Deputy Governor of Siliman Jaboun said most of them were hurt in bombings.

“It is a daily basis, if they are not bombing here, they are bombing in other areas and we get the reports, Delami [county] there is continuously bombing now, all these days bombing, killing civilian, injuring civilians and burning their houses and burning their crops,” said Jaboun.

In South Kordofan, hundreds of children like Rabe are under constant threat from attacks, hiding in caves with their families. Many children here have spent their whole lives living in war.

For now, Rabe is going back to his village, far from the hospital. One of many to face a difficult future.

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