Mother of Mercy Hospital
In the remote Nuba Mountains is a facility that shines as a beacon of hope. Mother of Mercy Hospital in Gidel, Sudan – the only hospital for a 300-mile radius – serves a population of more than a million people, across a territory equal to the size of the entire country of Austria.
A Sudan Relief Fund sponsored facility, Mother of Mercy reaches marginalized people living in extreme poverty with first-world skilled healthcare they would have no access to otherwise.
Lack of skilled healthcare is a tragic plight throughout Sudan and South Sudan. It’s not unusual for desperate patients to traverse great distances, sometimes hundreds of miles, under incredibly difficult conditions to reach the kind of help they find here.
Missionary doctor Tom Catena directs the hospital, and has served for many years as the only surgeon, seeing up to 500 patients in a single day. He works seven days a week, and is on call every night in case of emergencies.
“Dr. Tom” is a local hero who has helped so many people over the years that he’s known in the area as “the hands and feet of Jesus Christ.” When he visited the Nuba region in 2008, his heart was so moved that he couldn’t forget the tremendous need he saw there. Shortly after, he helped establish Mother of Mercy Hospital to serve the massive need for healthcare in the Nuba Mountains.
Dr. Tom is characterized by his indomitable spirit and unyielding commitment to help the people he came to serve. Years ago when a brutal civil war broke out in Sudan, Dr. Tom determined to stay to help people who needed medical treatment – even when all other humanitarian organizations left due to the severe danger involved.
Dr. Tom has endured bombing raids on his hospital and home, bouts of malaria and tuberculosis, and long periods of isolation when effects of the war kept humanitarian aid from being delivered – all because of his dedication to serve in this unreached region of the world.
Thanks to partners and supporters, Mother of Mercy Hospital is equipped with updated operating facilities where the hospital can perform over 2,000 surgeries and treat more than 75,000 patients every year.
Mother of Mercy Hospital offers maternity care – something sadly rare in this region where mother/infant mortality in childbirth is among the highest in the world. Mother of Mercy is attacking that statistic. Over 500 women each year experience safe and successful deliveries here thanks to wellness checkups and medically supervised deliveries or C-sections in the maternity ward.
Each year through gifts from our supporters, partnerships, and matching grants, Sudan Relief Fund supplies nearly all the medicines for Dr. Tom to continue his lifesaving work at Mother of Mercy Hospital. Over the years, our donors have also helped facilitate numerous improvements and additions to the hospital.
For his incredible and selfless commitment, Dr. Tom has been the recipient of numerous humanitarian awards, the subject of documentaries, and even had a stamp issued in his honor. But his only mission is to keep serving and saving lives in the Nuba Mountains.As he said poignantly, “People may say what we’re doing is just a drop in the ocean. But when you’re there, you don’t see a drop in the ocean. You see a person. You see a life.”
Right now a new threat is ravaging the region with civil war that broke out in Sudan’s capital in April of 2023. The brutal power struggle between Sudan’s military and the Rapid Support Forces militia has devastated much of Sudan’s cities and infrastructure. Services are shut down. Transportation routes are clogged by the fighting. Millions of people who suddenly found themselves in the middle of a violent conflict were forced to escape.
Because no planting can take place amid the fighting, agriculture has come to a halt. Drought conditions worsened by a plague of locusts in the Nuba Mountains contributed to the food shortage. Now the region is reeling under the worst hunger crisis in the world. Watchdog agencies fear millions of refugees may starve. Camps are woefully short of food to meet the needs of so many.
In some places, there is nothing left to eat but leaves the people collect and boil every day with some water. Many camps haven’t received food shipments for months because of logistics complications from the war.
Over one million internally displaced people (IDPs) have poured into the Nuba Mountains to escape the expanding warzone. But the food shortage persists as more people arrive, making the growing crisis one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes developing in the world today.
Dr. Tom warns conditions are “the worst he’s seen in fifteen years.” He reports at least 3 million people in Nuba could starve to death imminently. He’s asking for help to stop widespread starvation.
Currently Sudan Relief Fund is organizing a campaign to send Plumpy’Nut – a high-protein nutritional supplement used by global organizations like UNICEF and the WHO – to fight severe acute malnutrition among the starving children Dr. Tom is fighting to save at Mother of Mercy Hospital. This peanut-based vitamin and mineral paste is proven an effective weapon to rescue severely malnourished children from death by starvation, if they receive help in time.
If you would like to help Dr. Tom during this new time of emergency, please go here. Thank you for partnering with us to support Dr. Tom’s work at Mother of Mercy Hospital and continue saving lives in a desperate and forgotten part of the world. You make this possible.
