The doctor of the Nuba Mountains
Tom Catena spends his days offering medical care to people in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Life in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains is hard. The country’s president, Omar al-Bashir, is a dictator who rules his country with an iron fist. Conflict rages across the area, as rebel groups fight President Bashir’s army. To prevent rebels getting any foreign help, the charities and humanitarian aid organisations say they are prevented from entering conflict zones – zones such as the Nuba Mountains.
One 51-year-old US surgeon defies the ban, however, and lives in the mountains helping the people affected by the near-constant bombing and fighting. Tom Catena, originally from New York, in the US, has lived there since 2008. In 2011, when the conflict got worse, all the other foreign doctors left. Now, Catena is the only qualified surgeon left in an area larger than Scotland – with a population of 750,000.
Catena was a talented sportsman and briefly considered a career in politics before deciding to become a doctor. He spent years as a navy surgeon before working in a hospital in Indiana, US. Motivated by his Catholic beliefs, Catena went to Africa, first to Kenya and then to Sudan, to try to bring his medical expertise to those in need. “Doctors take care of sick people,” he explains, “and there were lots of sick here with no options for treatment.”
Now, he’s the only doctor in a hospital that serves almost three quarters of a million people. He’s responsible for the care of as many as 500 people every day. Although many people arrive at the hospital with illnesses, still more come in with injuries – the results of the government’s bomb attacks. Even the hospital, however, isn’t safe. Government forces have targeted it with their bombs — but Dr Tom, as the locals call him, just keeps working. He says he draws his inspiration and will to carry on from the Nuba people he lives among. They “will not give in to despair,” he says. “This encourages me to also not give up.”