Sudan’s Miseries Mount at Tiny Border Hospital

Between a dry river bed and a craggy rock is a small hospital that provides a narrow, gruesome window on the civil war in neighboring Sudan.

Most of the patients were wounded by bombs or gunfire. Many have lost limbs. Many are children.

They are victims of the 8-year-old war between Sudan’s northern government, dominated by Muslim Arabs, and insurgents in the black south, where most of the 6 million people are Christians or animists.

More than 200,000 people have been killed in the war. Its ebb and flow determines the workload of the doctors from the International Committee of the Red Cross, which runs the 200-bed hospital.

The influx of patients “is a bit erratic,” said Marianne Whittingdon, the head nurse. “Some days, we can have nothing; some days we can have 16 patients brought in.

“When the hospital was first set up, the fighting was just across the border. Now, the fighting has moved further west. We don’t tend to get fresh wounded because of the distance. The wounds tend to be older and very infected.”

Patients usually arrive by relief plane or truck.

“Mostly, they’ve been hurt in bombings or land mines or by gunfire,” said Whittingdon, 36, of New Zealand. “We treat a lot of amputees.”

Most of the 153 patients on this day appeared to be civilians wounded in government bombings of rebel-held towns. Many were in their teens or younger.

A child who appeared no older than 5 had a toe-to-hip cast on his left leg, which was broken in a bombing, and bandages on a shrapnel wound in the chest.

He hovered near a wounded friend of about the same age. They were naked save for the bandages, and neither was accompanied by a parent.

Inside one of six barn-like white canvas tents that house patients was a 16-year-old boy whose left leg had been blown off at the knee in the bombing of a rebel base. Doctors were examining the ugly, red stump.

In the next tent was a 14-year-old whose head was so bandaged that only his right eye could be seen. He had been asleep in his family’s reed hut when a hyena attacked, ripped out his left eye and crushed his cheekbone. The animal carried the boy off, but dropped him 500 feet away.

Attacks by hyenas have been an increasing problem in the region since a severe drought in 1988 that combined with the war to cause an estimated 250,000 deaths from starvation. Hungry animals ate the corpses and developed an appetite for human flesh, relief workers say.

Southern Sudan has no paved roads except for a few miles in and around Juba, the regional capital, which government troops control. The war has destroyed trade and there are no telecommunications, electricity or plumbing.

Great distances and a lack of transport mean patients arrive days or weeks after being injured. By then, their wounds usually are seriously infected, and the frequent result is amputations.

The hospital was established in 1987, when fighting between soldiers and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army was concentrated in the southeastern corner of Sudan, a few miles across the border.

Rebel gains moved the front hundreds of miles. Many towns have fallen to the rebels, making them targets of government bombing raids.

Because of the distance, most combatants with serious wounds cannot reach the hospital.

“Either the wounded have non-vital things that allow them to wait maybe weeks to reach Lopideng, or they die,” said Brigette Meng, a Red Cross spokeswoman in Nairobi, capital of Kenya. “That is why we have mostly old wounds.”

Factional fighting caused by a recent split in the rebel leadership produced additional patients for the hospital

In August, three dissident commanders accused rebel leader John Garang, a former Sudanese army colonel, of being a dictator, imprisoning or even executing those who disagreed with him.

The commanders, led by Riek Mashar, claim forces loyal to them have seized much of Sudan’s southeastern Upper Nile province from regular rebel units.

Rebel fighters lost their refuge in neighboring Ethiopia when Mengistu Haile Mariam, president of that country, was overthrown in May. Mengistu had given them bases and other logistical support.

Garang seeks greater autonomy and economic development for the south. The only major concession the government in Khartoum has made is to exempt the three southern regions from the Muslim law that applies elsewhere in Sudan.