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Australian nurse helping victims in Darfur’s war zone
Muhajariya is a town of about 40,000 people, two hours east of Nyala. Our compound is about a 10 minute walk from the hospital and we each have a tukul to live in. A tukul is a small round hut made of thatch and straw, open to the elements, of which there are many and varied. As always, no one can say my name, so the locals have given me an Arabic name – ‘Rayan’- which means when you drink water, you will not be thirsty. Work routine is basically 8-10 am, ward round of everyone in the hospital then into the theatre until midday doing any operations and dressings. It is very nerve wracking getting the fine line between anaesthetics and airway maintenance. The afternoon is more dressings and anything that is going then home to the tukul. Most of the patients are medical of origin but we also have a number of gunshot wounds. Bullets really make nasty holes in people…you can put your fist in some of these wounds. I finished sewing up one young man on Saturday after which fighting started outside, so we left him semi-conscious on the table while we crouched down around underneath! Then we had what is calmly known here as “ïnflux" – the first guy was a soldier who had a bullet go through his stomach and leave half of it hanging out the other side. He grimaced as he got on the table and we put two lines in him and filled him with ketamine, then he had a respiratory arrest and I wished I was far away. But my theatre assistants bagged him and my colleague Hendrika, did a laparotomy, and oversewed several sections of ripped bowel. It took four hours and he made it off the table, but half way through a little boy was also brought in. This time the bullet had gone in below his left ear and shattered his lower jaw and his right forearm, so I had to leave my man and turn to him. Fortunately the two beds are head to head so I could keep an eye on both. We debrided and dressed his wounds, the next a bullet in the femur, but at least it didn't come out again and leave a big hole. There was another man with a bullet through his armpit, and one with a shattered hand so we were busy for a while. I got home early evening and a huge sandstorm swept through camp for about three hours. Then we went back to theatre for another bullet wound, this time in the foot. My patient from yesterday died the next morning which I was really upset about. The rebels are fighting each other now which is a bit tricky as it becomes petty - apparently this skirmish was over a house. Ironically we are safe because we are in a rebel stronghold and the government troops can’t get in. I don't want to leave anyway. I like it here. The locals are so nice and friendly, helpful and always laughing. I have my own interpreter - El-Sadik, a teacher from Nyala. He's a good guy and we just hang out under the tree with the boys when it’s quiet.
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Raewyn
Turner is a theatre nurse from South Perth in Western Australia, currently
on her second mission with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)
in Darfur, western Sudan. Raewyn is now based at Muhajariya, a provincial
town in South Darfur, where 40,000 civilians have been forced to live
in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. Muhajariya is a town under
regular dispute between Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA) rebels and government
forces, while MSF treats 50 to 200 cases per week of war wounded in surgery.
Here Raewyn describes her first week in the MSF surgery in Muhajariya.