Our first week in Sudan

Before our team left the UK, they stopped to make dua. Within days they were opening donated cases in Khartoum, seeing patients at a free medical camp and teaching at the bedside. This is that first week, in the words of the people who were there.

Our team with local health staff at a free medical camp in Sudan, November 2026.

Before they left

On 31 October the luggage stood in rows outside, under the Doctors of Rahman banner, with about 27 boxes packed around it. “This is very expensive specialist surgical equipment and anaesthetic equipment that’s going to be used by our doctors,” said Dr Ismail, standing beside it. All of it, he said, had been “kindly donated by all our very generous donors across the UK and across the world.”

Then the team stopped, and raised their hands.

Making dua before leaving the UK, 31 October 2026.

“So here I am, Heathrow, Terminal 2,” one of the team said to her phone at the airport, “waiting to board my flight to my deployment mission, and this time it’s Sudan.”

Getting there

“We finally made it to Khartoum on day two,” Dr Mostafa Shalaby wrote in his diary of the mission. Khartoum was not the end of the journey for everyone. Within days half of the team was loading up to go further. The short route had not been cleared, so they took the long one.

What came out of the cases

In Khartoum, the cases came open. “We are looking at all the medicines, all the equipment that has been donated and being sent from our brothers and sisters around the UK and other parts of the world,” one of the team said, walking between them.

One case held anaesthetic equipment. “It costs about 10k British pounds,” said the doctor kneeling beside it. A small case of video laryngoscopes, used when an airway is too difficult for the usual tube, cost “about $700”, and “this special piece of equipment is not currently available in Sudan.” There were hip replacement sets too, so that our orthopaedic surgeons could operate on patients “to make them able to walk without pain.”

Where the work happened

In metal-walled clinic rooms, in tents and at a small table under a tree, our doctors sat down with patients. One short film from the week shows nothing but a doctor with a toddler on his lap, making her smile.

A consultation in Sudan, November 2026.

In one hospital, the team walked through a room they had seen before. “So this is the newly constructed OR,” one of them said on the way in. “Last time it was under construction, and now it is operational.”

In theatre with our team in Sudan, November 2026.

The team also sat and listened. In one hospital office they heard what the last months have brought to the city: drones, explosives and fire. “Many, many cases of trauma.”

What stays after they leave

A deployment ends. What it teaches doesn’t. In one classroom, the slide on the screen read: “The person changing the dressing sees problems first.” It’s a lesson for the people who will still be on those wards long after our team has gone home.

Teaching wound care in Sudan, November 2026.

The instruments were chosen with the same thought. One surgeon held up a tray for ankle reconstruction, bought in Pakistan and brought “for Sudan so that we can teach the residents and the doctors here on good technique of reconstructive surgery.”

What Sudan said back

Beside the kit, a Sudanese doctor working with the team spoke to the camera.

• Doctors of Rahman (2026) Day 2 of our medical mission in Sudan. Instagram reel with Dr Mostafa Shalaby, 2 November.
• Doctors of Rahman (2026) Team videos and photographs, Sudan, 31 October to 5 November. Unpublished.