NO SAFE PASSAGE

Amid a growing humanitarian crisis in Sudan, NHS doctors who were visiting the country found themselves trapped, without the support they expected from the British Government. Seren Boyd reports

Sudan’s tentative steps towards democracy have taken a dramatic wrong turn.

The nation which threw off military dictatorship four years ago is now trapped in a power struggle between the two generals who ousted President Omar al-Bashir.

Civilians have been caught in the crossfire between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary RSF (Rapid Support Forces) – and a growing humanitarian crisis.

Up to 70 per cent of hospitals in conflict areas are closed, mostly owing to lack of supplies, water and electricity, according to the Sudanese Doctors Union.

Hospitals have been bombed, ambulances attacked, medical supplies looted.

The few facilities still functioning – often without power or water – are overwhelmed. Medical supplies are desperately low.

‘Most of the doctors who are working in the hospitals are volunteers: surgeons, doctors, nurses, and some people from the community trying to assist,’ says Sudanese doctor Khalid Elsheikh Ahmedana of medical charity MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières).

The Turkish Hospital in Khartoum, which MSF supports, has set up about 30 beds for the war-wounded. Some days, it needs twice that number.

Dr Elsheikh Ahmedana fears the health crisis will escalate rapidly: water is scarce, dengue fever widespread.

‘There are dead bodies outside, and rubbish is gathering along with flies and mosquitoes,’ he says.

The MSF-supported hospital in El Fasher, North

Darfur, is the only functioning health facility for half a million residents.

Many of the war-wounded require surgery and blood transfusions: people with now unmanaged conditions such as diabetes are becoming seriously ill.

The violence means many simply cannot get to hospital.

‘Some people trying to access the hospital are telling us they’ve become trapped: they can’t reach the hospital or go back to their homes,’ says MSF’s Dr Mohamed Gibreel Adam.

‘People are dying in the community.’

Impossible choices

At least 78 NHS doctors who had travelled to Sudan to celebrate Eid with family found themselves trapped in a war zone.

Consultant cardiologist Mustafa Al Hassan, a British national, was holed up in the family home in Khartoum for 10 days, mostly without power or water.

‘We were woken up on Saturday 15th [April] by cannon fire, missiles and gunfire,’ says Dr Al Hassan. ‘Houses around us had stray missiles hitting them: our neighbour’s daughter died from a stray bullet while she was out in the garden.

‘The only response we got from the British Embassy was to “stay indoors and stay safe” but people were dying in their homes.’

Dr Al Hassan, his mother and brother eventually secured overpriced bus tickets to the Egyptian border. An email from the Foreign Office about the RAF evacuation plan arrived the morning they left Khartoum.

Dr Al Hassan stayed in Cairo with his mother for several days until his brother, initially denied entry to Egypt, could join them. Dr Al Hassan has since returned to work in the UK – but is applying for his mother to be able to come to Britain as his dependant. Several other NHS doctors face the same predicament.

‘She wants to go back to her home: I’ve been working in the NHS since 2007 and she’s never wanted to live here. She just needs a place of safety.’

Perilous escape

Shaza Faycal Mirghani, a French-Sudanese surgical trainee based in the Midlands, is one of many doctors in the UK who have lobbied for relatives and colleagues caught up in the conflict.

Her own daughters, aged two and five, were visiting Khartoum with relatives when fighting broke out. They were airlifted out to Djibouti by the French as the family have dual nationality – but not before enduring an anxious few days.

‘The RSF were stationed just outside the door and the house just behind our house was hit by a bomb,’ says Dr Faycal Mirghani.

‘The RSF questioned my brother one night: that’s the point they decided to leave.’

Dr Faycal Mirghani’s family had to make a dangerous car journey to the French Embassy, but thereafter had a military escort.

The British response compares poorly.

The RAF began airlifting out British nationals and their immediate dependants on 25 April – days after embassy staff were extracted.

People were told to find their own way to Wadi Saeedna airfield beyond Omdurman, Khartoum’s twincity – at their own risk.

Dr Faycal Mirghani, a member of the Sudanese Junior Doctors Association, says that in the absence of a British evacuation plan, many made their own escape.

One NHS doctor, who asked not to be named, made the perilous 12-hour bus journey with her family to Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast. Her baby and toddler are British nationals: she and her husband have indefinite leave to remain.

But when they arrived in Port Sudan, the Foreign Office said they needed to return to Omdurman for evacuation.

‘I felt that the country that had been my home for the past six years didn’t value me,’ she says.

They were eventually evacuated from Port Sudan by the Saudis.

After pressure from the BMA, foreign secretary James Cleverly reversed an earlier decision and let NHS doctors with British residency permits and their dependants board evacuation flights.

But the distress continues: many NHS doctors have relatives in Sudan. At the time of writing, at least three NHS doctors were known still to be in Sudan: one caring for a pregnant sister, two looking after relatives made homeless in the fighting.