The Nuba Mountains of Sudan stands out as the final place one would look forward to finding an Ivy League-educated physician dwelling among the many folks, however Dr. Tom Cetana wouldn’t have it some other approach.
A local of Amsterdam, New York, Catena attended Brown College. He performed soccer and studied engineering.
But Catena, a self-described “cradle Catholic,” grew to become concerned with the evangelical Christian group Campus Campaign for Christ and realized he wished to dedicate his life to the mission subject. That meant he most likely must go into one thing aside from engineering — drugs, he figured.
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Undeterred by the effort and time required, Catena took the required courses to fulfill the necessities for medical faculty admission. He later graduated from Duke College Faculty of Drugs on a scholarship from the U.S. Navy.
“In 1999, I used to be completed with my obligations, completed with all my coaching,” he advised Fox Information Digital in a telephone interview from the Nuba Mountains.
So he figured he would spend a yr doing mission drugs in Kenya, then return to the USA, set up a observe and “get on with issues.”
After finishing his residency and his required years with the Navy, Catena lastly started work within the mission subject.
“In the event you assume Kenya’s tough and difficult, it’s best to see how it’s in Sudan.”
“One yr was two, which was 5,” he mentioned. “And now it has been nearly 25 years that I’ve been in Africa – the primary seven-and-a-half years in Kenya, then 16 years right here in Sudan, within the mountains.”
Whereas Catena was in Kenya, he stored assembly individuals who had been both from or who had labored in Sudan.
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“They stored saying, you realize, ‘In the event you assume Kenya’s tough and difficult, it’s best to see how it’s in Sudan,'” he mentioned.
His curiosity piqued, Catena shifted gears and determined he wished to go to Sudan. How that was going to work, nevertheless, was one other problem.
“I knew nothing about Sudan,” he mentioned.
“It was an enormous nation and there was a civil battle that had been happening without end.”
In Sudan to remain
Whereas in Kenya, Catena met a U.S. Military surgeon named Dede Byrne, who was there filling in for one more surgeon who needed to briefly go away Kenya. Byrne, who’s now Sr. Dede Byrne, advised Catena she knew of a Catholic bishop who was constructing a hospital in Sudan.
“I acquired maintain of [the bishop’s] workplace. I began assembly with them,” Catena mentioned, setting the plans in movement for the institution of the hospital and his eventual transfer to Sudan.
In the course of the wet season, the world is nearly fully minimize off.
In 2008, Catena relocated to Sudan — he is there to remain. He married a nurse, Nasima, they usually just lately adopted two sons.
To say the Nuba Mountains, positioned in southern Sudan, are “distant” could be an understatement, Catena mentioned. Touring there from the USA can take practically every week, he mentioned, and the final a part of the journey entails a trek throughout a dust highway.
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In the course of the wet season, the world is nearly fully minimize off, he mentioned.
The Nuba Mountains are “form of Africa prefer it was, you realize, 70, 80 years in the past, 100 years in the past,” he mentioned.
Whereas different African nations have “gotten far more developed over the previous 20, 30 years,” Catena mentioned, the Nuba Mountains haven’t.
“They’re form of like how Africa has at all times been,” he mentioned.
Catena and his household wouldn’t have working water, “do not actually” have central energy and wouldn’t have something that requires electrical energy in his “little compound.”
“It is a fairly fundamental setup,” he mentioned — with no toilet, bathe and even flush rest room.
“We have got to handle something that hits our door.”
The Mom of Mercy Hospital, positioned in Gidel, Sudan, is the one hospital in an space with a inhabitants of greater than 1 million. Catena generally sees a whole bunch of sufferers a day. He’s at all times on name – as a result of with out him, there may be no person else.
“We have got to handle something that hits our door,” he mentioned.
The hospital has a “restricted” lab, an X-ray machine and an ultrasound. It’s powered by photo voltaic panels and a backup generator.
“We do not have a CT scan or an MRI,” he mentioned – so generally he has to function on a affected person simply to know what is occurring internally.
Nevertheless, a scarcity of recent medical tools was not the largest problem dealing with the physician, he mentioned.
‘Actually unimaginable’
The fractured training system in Sudan meant there have been only a few educated medical personnel.
When Catena arrived in 2008, there have been 15 folks working on the Mom of Mercy Hospital, Dr. Jon Fielder, co-founder of African Mission Healthcare, advised Fox Information Digital in a video interview from Kenya. (See the video on the prime of this text, and one other one slightly below as properly.)
“Tom values each affected person in entrance of him infinitely.”
African Mission Healthcare is without doubt one of the organizations that helps the Mom of Mercy Hospital and different comparable “mission” hospitals all through Africa.
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The group assists the hospital “with medicines and provides and coaching workers and infrastructure and fundraising,” Fielder mentioned.
The workers on opening day at Catena’s hospital consisted of “a few Catholic nuns and Tom and a few dozen native workers,” Fielder mentioned.
“Nobody [other than Catena] had an training above eighth grade. No person was formally educated in well being care.”
In 2024, barely a decade and a half later, “they’ve 270 workers and over 50 are formally educated as well being staff,” Fielder mentioned. “It is actually unimaginable. There is a native coaching faculty there for college kids to grow to be doctor assistants and midwives.”
“Tom,” Fielder mentioned, “is just essentially the most dedicated person who I do know. He values each affected person in entrance of him infinitely. And he works that approach. He works endlessly. He is an extremely gifted doctor.”
Fielder added, “He works as a lot as essential to get care to those that are sick and struggling and have nowhere else to go.”
For Catena, his sturdy religion is the motivation for every little thing he does.
“My religion is the one factor that has stored me right here,” Catena advised Fox Information Digital. “I imply, surely, I believe if I did not have that, I’d have jumped ship a very long time in the past.”
“I nonetheless have a sense God is looking for us.”
Catena mentioned his work is extraordinarily tough, exhausting and “there’s approach an excessive amount of tragedy for anyone to bear by themselves.”
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Whereas the Nuba Mountains are largely remoted from the bigger civil battle in Sudan, there are nonetheless dangers and sporadic preventing, he mentioned. And being the one physician for such a big inhabitants signifies that he has to do every little thing — from delivering infants to therapeutic accidents acquired in battle.
Regardless of all of this, Catena mentioned, he and the folks at his hospital are “very lucky,” he mentioned.
“Since I’ve gotten right here in 2008, we have had monks right here. So day by day now we have Mass,” he mentioned.
“I believe with out that chance to listen to the phrase of God day by day [and] obtain the sacraments day by day, I do not assume I’d have made it.”
Even with a life-style and work setting that’s unthinkable to most in his occupation in the USA, Catena is steadfast in his beliefs.
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“God is in cost,” he mentioned. “I do know it doesn’t matter what occurs right here, God is right here. God is in cost. God is taking care of me.”
“It is an unimaginable testomony to religion and dedication and compassion.”
And whereas Catena admits that having just lately grow to be a father has prompted him to “fear extra now than I did,” his religion stays.
“I nonetheless have a sense God is looking for us,” he mentioned.
Fielder concurred, saying the work of Catena and his crew is akin to a masterpiece.
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“I’ve form of mentioned, you realize, in case you’ve seen the Pieta in Rome, which is that this unimaginable murals — I believe, actually, what the crew has been in a position to do within the Nuba Mountains amid battle and poverty and locusts and famines, you realize, they’ve actually hewn an exquisite murals out of stone,” he mentioned.
“And it is an unimaginable testomony to religion, dedication and compassion.”