AIMS REPORT
BARAKA: HOPE AND HEALING FOR SUDANESE REFUGEES
BY JAMES ERIC APPEL ’00
Published in the fall/winter 2023 ALUMNI JOURNAL
It all started when Abraham sent me photos of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Land Cruisers dropping off war trauma victims. These patients were refugees fleeing the genocide in Darfur, Sudan. The Baraka Adventist Hospital in Eastern Tchad is about 150 miles from the Sudanese border. In mid-June, refugees started pouring in from Sudan. The refugees eventually made it to the refugee camps in Adre, but the facilities soon exceeded their capacity. MSF had nowhere else to turn as the number of casualties quickly overwhelmed their ability to care for them. MSF first tried the regional government hospital in Abéché, but it lacked the necessary materials to handle the many open fracture and trauma cases. So they brought them to the Baraka Adventist Hospital run by Adventist Health International (AHI), which I helped found starting in 2017.
At one point the 30-bed hospital had 104 patients hospitalized, most with gunshot wounds to the limbs: infected fractures with exposed bone and massive tissue loss. Most of the injuries were weeks old. The team took up the challenge, working late into the night for weeks to stabilize and treat these serious injuries. Out of all the patients, only a couple had to be amputated. Most injured limbs were salvaged with surgery and consistent wound care.
When I heard what was happening at the hospital, I begged AHI to give me a month’s leave to go and help. After getting their permission, I left Liberia on a Sunday morning, flying to N’Djamena with stops in Ghana, Togo, and Nigeria. Accompanying me was Dr. Joela Hayibor, a young Adventist doctor working with me in Liberia since May. After spending Monday and Tuesday in N’Djamena going through immigration and other formalities, we took a 13-hour bus ride across 900km of desert to Abéché.
Wednesday was mostly spent visiting old friends and local authorities. The governor’s right-hand man met with us and told us that two of his nephews were treated at the Baraka Adventist Hospital. Therefore, we could count on him for anything we needed. We also visited the MSF office in Abéché to coordinate our collaboration. Dr. Hassan, medical director for the Mixed Tchadian Sudanese Armed Forces who have been helping the refugees in Adré, took us to Abougoudam in the Armed Forces ambulance.
After lots of hugs with old colleagues and friends, we were taken on a quick tour of the hospital. I saw patients in shelters built of straw and tarps, on porches, in the outpatient waiting room, anywhere and everywhere. But I could see hope in all their eyes. They had just fled the most terrible massacre in recent Sudanese history (which is saying a lot). After finally arriving at the refugee camp, they were told MSF couldn’t take care of them. Then, they were put in the backs of Land Cruisers and bounced around the desert until they arrived at a funny-looking “hospital” made of Ecodomes. Other patients tell them that it will be a deaf nurse who will do their operation. They must have lost all hope!
But then they were welcomed, treated, operated on successfully and almost all their wounded limbs were salvaged. As I walked around that first evening, I only saw one amputee. I was overcome by emotion realizing the privilege I had of being a small part of this project. I see how my Tchadian friends have improved things over the years without outside funding and how they have masterfully handled this crisis, bringing hope and healing to so many refugees.
That evening, I lay outside under the stars on a mat, ready to sleep, mentally preparing for the eight surgeries scheduled in the morning. In less than three weeks, I performed over 70 operations and rounded daily on almost 100 orthopedic trauma patients. In the end, I realized that the hospital is well named: Baraka means blessing in Arabic.
Dr. Appel lived and worked in Chad from 2004–2019 at three different Adventist hospitals. He is currently working at the SDA Cooper Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia, with his wife, Sarah, and their three children: Miriam, Noah and Isak.
WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?
We live in a time when war and violence again dominate the evening headlines on many days. Yet, as physicians, we embody the very opposite in our daily lives and promote healing and health. Our alumni share God’s love through medical care with those around us in every setting imaginable. While most of our alumni work in a calm, structured, and temperature-controlled U.S. medical office or hospital, there are others with career paths that take them far outside that well-known structure. And, a few of our alumni provide care to those affected by violence and war or the challenges that arise when refugees are forced to flee their homes in the face of those threats. Some of our alumni face the very violence we are taught to avoid: maybe it’s a gunshot wound in Detroit or maybe an injured refugee fleeing violence from a war-torn country. Each day we are God’s hands and feet showing His love through medical care and promoting whole person health to everyone we come in contact with—not just the nice, nor the rich, nor those with the best health insurance, but to everyone. Both our training and beliefs support the use of our talents for every single person we find on our schedule that day, even those with differing religious or political views than our own, as highlighted by the statue of the “Good Samaritan” that is central on Loma Linda University’s campus. To borrow a well-known phrase, “Won’t you be my neighbor?”
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