Healthcare and Medicine

Mother of Mercy Hospital, Nuba Mountains

2021 was an exceptionally busy year for Mother of Mercy, a 400-bed hospital near Gidel, in southern Sudan’s Nuba Mountains. In this region of around one million people, Dr. Tom Catena and his staff serve hundreds of patients every day.

This year, more people than ever have come to seek Dr. Tom’s excellent care. More patients means the need for bigger and better facilities. We recently broke ground on a much needed hospital expansion. A clinic for eye patients and a storage room for medications have been added—including over $500,000 in medications provided by your generosity.

This is an exciting time for the hospital and the people of the Nuba Mountains. The region has gone from having no surgical hospital to having one with resources to fit prosthetics, repair cleft lips, and bring healthy babies into the world.

Dr. Ahmed Zakariah, El Gigaiba

Increased access to healthcare in the Nuba Mountains goes beyond the expansion of Mother of Mercy. Dr. Ahmed Zakariah worked alongside Dr. Tom until the two decided that the reach of their care would be expanded by Dr. Ahmed establishing a second hospital all the way in El Gigaiba.

Sudan Relief Fund has financed Dr. Ahmed’s hospital from the beginning. Now, we are coordinating with the Nuban Secretary of Health to deliver medicine to Dr. Ahmed and dozens of small clinics scattered throughout the mountains.

Bringing lifesaving healthcare throughout these rural mountains is difficult and complicated. But Dr. Ahmed and his staff are persevering. Through your generosity, he will be able to continue to minister to the people of El Gigaiba.

St. Theresa Hospital, Nzara

Through your support of Sudan Relief Fund, you are helping support and expand St. Theresa Hospital—the only facility providing critical level care to the 250,000 people in Nzara and the surrounding region.

In 2021, St. Theresa treated over 5,500 patients with the medicine and diagnostic equipment your generosity provided. This included complex surgeries performed in the new operating theatre, as well as lifesaving infusions from the new blood bank. A special clinic for those with vision problems is also nearing completion!

One of the most crucial additions to the hospital this past year was the new maternity ward. In South Sudan, one in five children die before their fifth birthday. With your help, SRF supports a Safe Motherhood program and expanded assistance and aid for pregnant women and babies. By helping expand staffing and stocking of key medical equipment in 2021, you saved the lives of mothers and newborns who would have been helpless without St. Theresa Hospital.

Education

During a year of famine and floods, when Sudan Relief Fund and our partners devoted huge effort to meeting the basic needs of people in crisis, we didn’t let up on investing in education. We’re increasing the capacity and quality of schools across the country, often alongside our other areas of aid.

That’s the case at the Ave Maria Parish in Source Yubu, where Father Avelino Bassols has welcomed more than 800 people displaced by violence in 2021. In addition to revitalizing the church, building a health clinic, and sourcing doctors and nurses to run the facility, Fr. Avelino is emphasizing education.

When refugee children arrive at Ave Maria, Fr. Avelino places them in school immediately. He reminds them, and us, that there are two things we can never lose: our faith and our education. In order to accommodate the growing number of children, Father Avelino is adding classrooms to the two primary schools your generosity has already built. Sudan Relief Fund also plans to fund five new classrooms for the secondary school in Source Yubu, as well as laboratories and a library. This ambitious project is necessary because the number of students (now at 148) is expected to triple!

Those students are taught by seven university graduate teachers—but more teachers are needed. Sudan Relief Fund recognizes the need across the country for schools to staff teachers and has helped in this effort by continuing its partnership with Solidarity with South Sudan. Thanks to the generosity and partnership of our donors, we were able to send $150,000 to support Solidarity’s Teacher Training Program and Catholic Health Training Institute.

Your support of the Teacher Training Program has an impact across the young country. Of the hundreds who have graduated from the program since 2008, 70% now teach at primary schools within the country, including those supported by Sudan Relief Fund. And that’s not all! Graduates from Solidarity’s Catholic Health Training Institute work at St. Theresa Hospital and Mother of Mercy Hospital, where your generosity is providing healthcare for the people of the Nuba Mountains.

Your support builds additional classrooms, and by doing so you are building the future of South Sudan:

• SRF has continued its partnership with the Christian Brothers of Instruction at Our Lady of the Assumption School in Rimenze. As class sizes increased, your generosity funded increased dormitory capacity in 2021.
• Construction continued on a science building and IT labs at the Salesian girls’ high school Brother Bernhard is rebuilding in the Wau Diocese.
• Construction was completed on the new block of the Bishop Abangite Science and Technology School in Yambio. Your generosity is providing classroom space to house the large influx of new students, as well as paying the salary of a new teacher.

This difficult year has been a bright one for the children of South Sudan—you are ensuring that they have the tools to build prosperous, self-sufficient lives for themselves!

Refugee Aid

Civil war and tribal violence have displaced almost four million people since South Sudan’s founding. More recently, catastrophic flooding has added to the forces driving people from their homes. More refugees than ever are being left without food, water, shelter, or medical care. Many aid organizations have left South Sudan because of threats posed by the pandemic, so Sudan Relief Fund is one of the few sources of help for these vulnerable souls.

Sudan Relief Fund moved to provide emergency assistance to the millions of displaced people fleeing tribal conflict in Ezo County in 2021. UN agencies only provided non-food relief to this vulnerable population, so Sudan Relief Fund’s provision of food relief was vital to their survival. You ensured the well-being and dignity of these refugees by providing soap, blankets, sleeping mats, and the transportation of emergency supplies.

Your ongoing support has been crucial in this time of upheaval. No one in the Diocese of Malakal anticipated how decimated the region would be by flooding—300,000 families have lost everything. Pope Francis extended a gift of $75,000 to these vulnerable brothers and sisters in Christ, and you united with him and other donors in providing an additional $100,000 of food and non-food relief to protect their lives and dignity.

Displaced persons are completely dependent on organizations like Sudan Relief Fund for survival. Your support has provided for their physical, psychosocial, and spiritual needs.

Working in the leper colony in Malo, Nurse Noeleen sees these desperate conditions firsthand. These poor souls have been driven from their homes and are left with nothing. Simple things like food, clothing, medicine, or a place to sleep make a big difference. She recently shared the story of Mary, a woman she encountered living alone with no one to care for her.

“I cannot imagine how she had managed … We were told she had typhoid, malaria, brucellosis and stomach ulcers. She was treated there for 14 days on strong IV medication. We got her some clothes, a blanket, hot food 3 times a day and plenty of juice to give her strength. It was obvious that she had never received the comforts of good food and a warm bed before.”

Proper food, good medicine, and sanitary living conditions are vital to Noeleen’s work. With these, leprosy no longer means a life of misery. With these, it’s treatable.

Your support allows Nurse Noeleen to provide essential food and medicine to the lepers of Malo. She is working to provide more than just immediate necessities, as she labors to build a health clinic, permanent housing, sanitation systems, and a well. She asks for your continued support: “Please help those here in any way that you can. And keep them in your constant prayers, as we fight to save the lives of so many here.”

Fr. Federico’s “Small Miracle”

Before Father Federico Loro Gatluak arrived in South Sudan as a missionary seven years ago, he never imagined the violence and poverty he would find in his new home.

When he arrived, Father Federico was especially moved by the number of orphans wandering the streets of the city of Juba in search of food and shelter. Due to war and famine, South Sudanese children are losing their parents and their homes— so Fr. Federico began working with street children.

One night, Father saw a boy with a leg infection die, and then two children shot to death. The suffering of these innocents was too much for him to bear, so he and his fellow Franciscans founded St. Clare’s Orphanage. It began as just a handful of children in an empty house, but has since grown into a thriving home for over 100 children. These children, often traumatized by seeing their parents killed before their eyes, receive food, shelter, trauma support, and medicine.

St. Clare’s is a home for the homeless, but its capacity is strained as police and social services bring more children they find abandoned on the streets. Father Federico works to ensure that the orphanage is a place of hope for children like Samuel, a little boy who came to St. Clare’s two years ago after his mother was shot dead while she was holding him.

“When he arrived, he didn’t speak a word or smile. Now, he has begun to talk and laugh with the other children—we call him our ‘small miracle’!”

Fr. Federico feels called to alleviate the suffering of the people of Juba: “The constant warring, the death, the destruction, the strife—and the overall hopelessness. The people of South Sudan have so little, and that is being taken away from them with each passing day.”

In 2021, your support of Sudan Relief Fund provided Fr. Federico with tools to combat that hopelessness. He has opened a new Pastoral Center at his parish. There, university students were able to use the internet access, which your support provides, to take online classes when the pandemic closed schools. When displaced people come to his door, he is able to offer them food and direct them towards medical care. Fr. Federico is also ministering to the minds of his people who have suffered greatly. He wrote to us, “Just a few days ago, some young men came to our mission thanking us for the Trauma Awareness Course I gave last year, as they are still enjoying its fruits. They asked for more such workshops and activities!”

Here, on the dusty streets of Juba, Fr. Federico is transforming the lives of orphans and adults alike. He is deeply grateful for your partnership, wishing “a great thank you to every donor to Sudan Relief Fund.” He says, “You grant us great help and hope every year!”