Shimaa Mahmoud puts on a face mask. Before pulling on latex gloves, she turns up the music on her computer; gentle melodies blend with Quranic verses in Arabic. Then the 29-year-old dentist opens the waiting room door to welcome her next patient.
Abdalla Ibrahim Mohammed, an older Sudanese man with a swollen cheek, lies back in the chair. “I have a big problem with my teeth,” he says, explaining he has been to the dentist several times since 1990 and has had a few molars extracted. “Now the filling in another one fell out as I was eating,” he adds, pointing to a back molar. As a refugee living in exile without work, he cannot afford treatment. “I’ve been to many hospitals. But it’s better here,” he tells DW. The doctors are better and he gets treatment for free. “If I tell my story, it’s not a problem.”
Mahmoud’s dental practice is on the ground floor of the Alsalam Clinic in Kampala’s Kabalagala district, a three‑story building where many Sudanese refugees have settled. Since war broke out in Sudan in 2023 between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), almost 100,000 Sudanese have fled to Uganda. The East African country currently hosts around 1.8 million refugees, more than any other African nation.
Most Sudanese men and women needing care come to Alsalam Clinic, where more than a dozen doctors from Sudan work. The clinic is equipped with modern devices rarely seen in local facilities: a flat-screen monitor above the dental chair and an intraoral camera that captures detailed images inside the mouth. Mahmoud checks the elderly man’s teeth with the camera and notes the wider effects of conflict on health. “We must always keep the war in mind,” she says, explaining that PTSD and other mental health issues can affect teeth. Many people grind their teeth at night because of stress and trauma; their gums are often neglected, and some no longer drink clean water.
Mahmoud herself fled suddenly when the war erupted and could not even pack a toothbrush. Despite her young age, she has a history of activism. During the 2019 protests in Khartoum that sought to topple Omar al‑Bashir, she was among the demonstrators and led activities at her university. The Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors was a strong force within the Sudanese Professionals’ Association, helping organize resistance committees and caring for wounded protesters. “Back then, it was still forbidden for women to wear trousers in my country,” she says, pointing to frayed jeans she bought during the protests. “After 2019, we finally got the right to wear them.”
Dr. Assadig Ibrahim, 42, a senior physician and one of three partners who invested in the clinic, greets Mahmoud. Ibrahim is from Darfur; after opening a clinic in el‑Fasher he fled when his clinic was looted and destroyed by the RSF. He was able to use savings and help from a brother abroad to start anew. “When we arrived in Uganda, we found ourselves jobless and we were thinking why we couldn’t establish a clinic here,” he recalls.
Together with his partners — all Sudanese doctors — he took over a rundown clinic in Kabalagala, invested their savings, and bought modern equipment. They found many Sudanese patients who struggled with language, since most speak Arabic while Uganda’s lingua franca is English. The clinic’s signs are in Arabic and English. In the crowded waiting room, veiled women with children sit beside elderly men in robes and turbans; some Ugandans also seek care.
Ibrahim says they wanted to carry the spirit and role doctors played in the revolution into exile. Their model offers two days of free treatment each week for war refugees and three days for paying patients. The approach has worked: Alsalam Clinic has built a reputation among Sudanese refugees and well‑off Ugandans alike, providing culturally familiar, affordable care while sustaining a private practice.
This article was originally written in German.
