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Armed conflict is nothing new to those in and around the city of Malakal, South Sudan. Close to the country’s prized oil fields - it has changed hands a dozen times during the country’s two year-old civil war. But earlier this month, the violence reached a new level as fighting spread to a United Nations-controlled civilian protection zone for the first time, causing thousands who had sought shelter there to run for their lives.
During a battle that raged over two days in mid-February, at least 18 people died and precious medical facilities, including health clinics and a rare surgical operating theatre staffed by International Medical Corps, were damaged or destroyed. It was amid the chaos of this carnage and destruction that an Ethiopian obstetrician named Tekeselassie Gebreyohannes—known simply as Dr. Tek—found himself working in the most desperate of circumstances: bringing new life into the world during the very moment he was surrounded by death.
As the fighting went on around him, with the operating theatre reduced to a panicked disorder, Dr. Tek and his team from International Medical Corps delivered three new babies—all of them healthy—using the corner of an old shed as a makeshift delivery room and the floor as a table, the mothers’ relatives holding up a curtain to protect their privacy. He recalled the first infant delivered, a girl who weighed 2.6 kilograms, but almost everything else remains indistinct.
“We didn’t get the baby’s name,” he said. “It was chaos.”
The team delivered a fourth child several hours later, after the battle had ended, in the relative comfort of a 20ft long shipping container hastily rigged as a delivery room. After giving birth the new mothers were transferred with their infants to a nearby recovery area, a 36 x 18ft tent, where they shared their space with 15 others - all casualties of the battle.
“We were so overwhelmed in the moment, we were just physically dazed,” he explained. “Now when I look back, it’s difficult…very hard to take in that people outside are dying and inside we’re helping people give birth. Hard to comprehend.”
He says he hopes to see the mothers with their newborns again in the days ahead, when they are scheduled to return to a post-natal clinic for vaccinations. In the meantime Dr. Tek has other concerns, such as the fate of a new mother named Zeinab Ahmed from the remote Nuba Mountains to the north, who had recently taken shelter in the UN civilian protection zone along with her family. He had delivered Zeinab’s baby by Caesarian section just prior to the battle and she was recovering when the fighting broke out. By the time she was ready to return to her temporary home, Zeinab’s entire family—her mother, husband and two children—had fled.
“She and her baby are both fine, but they have nowhere to go,” Dr. Tek said.
Now there is the issue of rebuilding. The battle not only took many lives, but also destroyed life-saving medicines and damaged healthcare clinics and medical equipment, including the lone operating theatre and post-operative care rooms available to the tens of thousands of South Sudanese who, like Zeinab, have fled their homes for the relative safety of Malakal’s UN protection zone.
“It took months to complete the facility enabling us to carry out complicated deliveries,” he said. “I never dreamed this would happen.”
