On April 14, 2023, my colleagues in Sudan’s Ministry of Health and I met for the relatively routine business of endorsing a plan to deal with looming epidemics of cholera, dengue fever, and measles. The next morning, my family and I awoke to gunfire in the streets of the capital, Khartoum; we lived near the headquarters of the Army General Command, where the fighting began, and heard the sound of jet fighters bombing the airport and other targets. Civil war had erupted between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group, and the Sudanese army. We saw smoke billowing over the city and dead bodies in the street. Hundreds of people died that day.

The fighting plunged the ministry—and me—into dark uncertainty. For the first 72 hours, I felt paralyzed and overwhelmed by the chaos. Khartoum Teaching Hospital, the last hospital still open in the central medical area in the capital, came under fire from the RSF on the third day of fighting. I was in the building, and we made the decision to evacuate all of the patients, some of whom were on ventilators, to other hospitals in safer parts of Sudan.