A volunteer medical team from the region has been on a mercy mission to one of the most impoverished countries on Earth. Health Editor Barry Nelson reports on the issues they faced.

WHEN Dr Mahir Hamad and his team flew to Sudan to help improve medical care in hospitals abroad, they were so shocked by the state of the first intensive care unit they saw that the first thing they did was clean it.

Six staff from South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust gave up their holidays to spend 16 days teaching colleagues in the African country, which has been in the headlines recently after the people in the south of the country – Africa’s largest – voted to separate and form the continent’s newest state.

On arrival, they soon realised their first challenge was to find water and detergent. Then it was all hands on deck as the volunteers rolled up their sleeves and began scrubbing.

Dr Hamad, consultant physician and clinical director of acute medicine, returns home to Sudan to see his family twice a year and always spends his holidays teaching and carrying out voluntary work, but for the second year in successsion, he has been joined by colleagues from The James Cook University Hospital, in Middlesbrough, and the Friarage Hospital in Northallerton, North Yorkshire.

This year, the team included consultant surgeon Dr Omar Nugud, directorate manager of critical care services Lindsay Garcia, clinical matron for acute services and A&E Debbie Christian, consultant intensivist Diane Monkhouse and clinical sister for acute medicine Clare Alderson.

Ms Monkhouse was among those returning to Sudan for the second year in succession. She says: “This time we visited hospitals that were far more deprived than we visited last time.

“We think we are restricted by finances sometimes, but it is nothing compared to what our colleagues in Africa have to put up with day-in and day-out.”

The team taught basic life support to about 300 nurses and infection prevention and control to more than 50 nurses in a number of hospitals.

Ms Garcia, who was on her first visit to Sudan, says: “I did not know what to expect, but I was humbled by the experience. It was overwhelming to see that people died if they could not afford to pay for healthcare.

“When we visited Port Sudan, we were shown the intensive care unit and it was quite apparent that we had to focus on the basics such as infection prevention and control and recognition of the acutely ill patient.

“They also had quite a lot of donated equipment they did not know how to use, so we taught them how to use it.”

Ms Monkhouse says: “They were very keen to learn – it was very humbling.”

Dr Hamad was very grateful to his colleagues for all their hard work: “They did some excellent work out there – including a spot of cleaning.

“It is expected of me because I am from Sudan, but it is fantastic that my colleagues want to come and help. One of the doctors emailed me to say our work would never be forgotten.”

The trip to Sudan also enabled the team to visit a children’s orphanage they worked with last year.

Ms Christian says: “They remembered us and had pictures of us on their phones. It was very clean and they had put little signs up about infection control, so they had put into practice what we had taught them last year.

“The experience was emotionally draining, but it was also fabulous. We are already counting down the weeks until we go again next year.”

Dr Hamad visits Sudan for two weeks twice a year. He forfeits his annual leave to work in hospitals offering clinical and educational expertise.

Having had the opportunity to visit Sudan as part of a medical and nursing convoy, Ms Garcia and Ms Christian say they saw the positive impact one person can make to a nation’s healthcare.

Ms Garcia said: “During Dr Hamad’s time in Sudan, he ran a number of clinics, never refusing to see patients regardless of the length of his day. Patients had sometimes waited weeks and months for his return to gain free consultation. Often patients attending the clinic did not have means to pay for investigations and treatment. Dr Hamad’s response to this was to fund the treatment himself without any doubt or hesitation.”

Geography Revealed

SUDAN is the largest and one of the most geographically diverse countries in Africa.

Mountain ranges divide the deserts of the north from the swamps and rainforests of the south. The River Nile splits the country in two as it flows from east to west.

Sudan became part of the British Empire in 1898 and only received its independence in 1956. The country has been devastated by civil war for years, although the fighting has now stopped.

Decades of conflict have left south Sudan’s infrastructure in ruins.