LONDON: When Dr. Marwa Gibril left her medical practice in the UK to return to Port Sudan in January, she knew she was entering a country in collapse. Cholera was spreading, health workers were fleeing, and millions had been displaced from their homes.
Yet for Gibril — a family physician trained in Britain with a master’s degree in public health from Harvard — the decision was clear. She wanted to be with her family, use her medical skills, and support Sudan’s health system in crisis.
“I had all this knowledge and skills and I thought it’s time to put them in the right place,” she told Arab News from Port Sudan, the relatively secure coastal city and de facto capital where her mother and brother have chosen to remain.
“It’s a combination of all this together that I have to pay part of it back to the country.”
Gibril’s return comes against the backdrop of Sudan’s most severe displacement crisis in modern history. The war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which began in April 2023, has devastated the country.
