Pittsburgh Doctor Escapes Khartoum as Colleague Is Killed in Sudan's Conflict

A Pittsburgh gastroenterologist who traveled to Sudan for a family funeral has fled the capital after fighting erupted, and a close colleague of his was killed in the violence. As of April 28, 2023, the war between Sudan's military factions was 11 days old.

Dr. Mohamed Eisa flew to Sudan on April 12 after his father died. Three days later, an explosion shook his family's home in Khartoum, marking the start of clashes between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces that have since killed more than 500 people and injured more than 4,000. Eisa told NPR his family spent ten days sheltering, "barely getting any sleep," lying under beds and listening to constant gunfire and airstrikes.

Eisa is secretary general of the Sudanese American Physicians Association, a nonprofit founded in 2019 to connect Sudanese doctors in the United States and support health facilities in Sudan. He described the health situation in Khartoum as "disastrous," with planned procedures canceled and doctors afraid for their lives. Several hospitals in the capital have been attacked and are running low on supplies. The World Health Organization said on Wednesday that only 16% of Khartoum's health facilities were operating normally, and that 24,000 pregnant women could not reach maternal care.

He offered examples of the toll. A colleague had to take a patient off a ventilator after power was cut and no fuel was available for the generator. Staff then pumped air by hand with an Ambu bag for 24 hours, taking turns, before they had to stop, and the patient died. In Omdurman, where the association runs a pediatric hospital, five babies arrived in one day from closed facilities. One couple had searched three days for an incubator for their newborn, and arrived too late.

On April 25, Eisa's friend Dr. Bushra Sulieman was killed. Also a gastroenterologist, Sulieman had returned to Sudan from the United States years earlier to train doctors, taught at the University of Khartoum's faculty of medicine and was a director at the Sudanese American Medical Association. Eisa said he had urged Sulieman to leave, only for his friend to answer that he had come back from the U.S. to stay. Eisa said Sulieman was preparing to go when he was attacked. "It's not Bushra that died, a nation died," he said.

Association members believe Sulieman was stabbed to death in a robbery attempt outside his home while taking his father to a dialysis appointment. White House national security spokesman John Kirby confirmed on Wednesday that two Americans had died in the violence since April 15. Sulieman was likely one of them, though he was not named.

Eisa then made a dangerous escape with dozens of relatives. Because the family lives in a hot zone near the airport road, they had to slip through side streets the night before to reach a neighborhood where a van driver would pick them up. The 45-minute drive to the bus station, through checkpoints held by RSF soldiers, was "the longest journey of my life," he said, recalling bodies in the streets and in civilian cars near unexploded missiles. After leaving Khartoum, the roughly 600-mile trip to Port Sudan was comparatively straightforward.

A.K.M. Musha, country director for Concern Worldwide, reached Port Sudan on April 24 in a U.N. convoy of 80 vehicles carrying eight or nine hundred people. The trip took 34 hours. He said his organization's international staff were leaving but would support operations remotely, and asked what would become of the people left behind, noting that 16 million Sudanese relied on humanitarian aid before the war.

Eisa is now waiting for an evacuation ship to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and plans to rejoin his family in Pittsburgh. He described thousands of displaced people on Port Sudan's streets, rising prices and no commercial ships arriving. On Friday, the army and the RSF agreed to extend a ceasefire by 72 hours, although heavy fighting was still reported in Khartoum and Darfur.