Why I Chose Healthcare

When people ask me why I chose to work in healthcare, my mind is never blank. I always go back to my childhood. 

I was very young, probably six or seven years old, when my mother became seriously ill and was admitted to a hospital for several months. There was little I could do to help rather than fetch water, while my father tried to balance caring for us at home and visiting the hospital whenever he could. 

I don’t remember much about my mother’s time in the hospital, but I remember watching the nurses care for her. They fed her, turned her when she could not move, checked on her, and treated her with such kindness. At that age I didn't fully understand medicine, but I understood care. They were not part of my family, but they took such good care of my mother. To me, this was extraordinary.  

As I got older, I became even more determined to study science and pursue a medical career. Originally, I wanted to become a doctor, but finances made that difficult. Instead, I studied clinical medicine and later perused a bachelor's degree in public health and then completed a higher diploma in health leadership and management. 

But there was another defining moment in my childhood that pushed me further to study medicine. 

In 1994, during the war (the second Sudanese civil war 1983 – 2005), I became sick with sleeping sickness in Kajo Keji where we were living at the time. At the time, there was no treatment available in our area. My father realized that something was wrong with me and decided to take me to Uganda, where screening was possible. 

I still think about that journey to this day. We walked for two days. 

I was screened by a team supported by MSF and was diagnosed with sleeping sickness. By then, I had already reached stage two of the disease, and the infection was beginning to affect my brain. Without treatment, I might not have survived. I was then transferred by MSF to the Adjumani General Hospital in the north of Uganda, where I received treatment and recovered. 

Looking back, it is remarkable. Years before I ever thought of working for MSF, they saved my life. 

These two experiences shaped almost everything that came after. One showed me the importance of compassionate care, and the other showed me what access to healthcare can mean when people have nowhere else to turn. 

After graduating as a clinical officer, I began working in healthcare and quickly realized how great the needs were across South Sudan. You see patients arriving late because they could not reach a health facility. You see children suffering from illnesses that could have been treated earlier. You see communities where healthcare is simply absent. I see this every day. 

This reality pulled me towards humanitarian work. I first joined MSF in 2012 as a clinical officer in Aweil town in the north. I had just finished school and had very little work experience. MSF became the place where I learned. I worked in nutrition programmes, paediatrics, neonatal care and maternity services, and every department taught me something different. 

Over the years, I moved into leadership roles, first as a hospital clinical team leader in Lankien, a town in Nyirol County in eastern South Sudan, and later as a medical team leader in Minkaman in Awerial County. It was there that I gained experience in supervising teams. 

More recently, I have been working in Minkaman, supporting services for people displaced by conflict. When our team arrived, many families were living under trees or in temporary settlements after fleeing violence. The needs were enormous. We started mobile clinics, supported access to clean water, repaired boreholes, distributed emergency supplies and organized vaccination campaigns. 

As a team leader, my main objective is capacitating my team. Sometimes that means standing beside someone throughout a clinical activity. Sometimes it means identifying a gap and conducting a short training session after work. Capacity building is not something that happens once. It happens every day. 

Throughout my career I have responded to many emergencies, but some are impossible to forget. 

In 2020, following intense fighting in Jonglei state, our facility received more than 60 casualties. For almost three days, the flow of patients did not stop. People were arriving with severe injuries, and everyone worked under immense pressure. 

What these experiences have taught me is that you rarely know what is coming next in humanitarian work. Plans change. Emergencies happen. Communities move. Disease spreads. You adapt and keep going. 

Sometimes I think back to the small boy who watched nurses care for his mother in the hospital. Other times I think about the boy who walked for two days to reach treatment for sleeping sickness. Neither could have imagined that one day they would be leading medical teams across South Sudan. 

Yet here I am. 

And after all these years, I still feel the same motivation that first drew me into healthcare.