Shimaa Mahmoud taps play on her computer, letting gentle melodies and Quranic verses trail through the small clinic. She puts on a face mask and latex gloves, then opens the waiting room door to welcome her next patient.
Abdalla Ibrahim Mohammed, an older Sudanese man with a swollen cheek, reclines in the dental chair. He says a filling fell out while eating and that he has had several extractions since 1990. As a refugee without work, he cannot afford private care. “I’ve been to many hospitals. But it’s better here,” he says, praising the free treatment and the staff.
Mahmoud works on the ground floor of Alsalam Clinic in Kampala’s Kabalagala district, a three‑story building where many Sudanese refugees live. Since the 2023 fighting between the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces, nearly 100,000 Sudanese have fled to Uganda. The country now hosts about 1.8 million refugees, more than any other African nation.
More than a dozen Sudanese doctors staff Alsalam. They converted a rundown facility into a modern clinic, investing savings and outside help to buy equipment such as a flat‑screen monitor over the dental chair and an intraoral camera that captures detailed images inside the mouth. Mahmoud uses the camera to explain Abdalla’s condition, and she links dental problems to the stresses of war: post‑traumatic stress and grinding at night, neglected gums, and limited access to clean water.
Mahmoud, 29, fled suddenly when the fighting began and could not even pack a toothbrush. She was active in the 2019 protests in Khartoum, where the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors played a key role in providing care for wounded demonstrators and supporting resistance committees. “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.”
One of the clinic’s partners, Dr. Assadig Ibrahim, 42, is from Darfur. He opened a practice in el‑Fasher that was looted and destroyed by the RSF, then fled. Using personal savings and help from a brother abroad, he and two other Sudanese doctors saw an opportunity in Kampala: take over a dilapidated clinic in Kabalagala, equip it properly, and serve their compatriots.
Language was an early obstacle: many Sudanese patients speak Arabic, while Uganda’s lingua franca is English. Alsalam’s signs are bilingual. In the waiting room, veiled women with children sit beside elderly men in robes and turbans; some Ugandans also come for care.
The clinic’s model blends mission and sustainability: two days a week are reserved for free treatment for war refugees, and three days are for paying patients. This mix has built a reputation among newly arrived Sudanese and well‑off Ugandans alike, offering culturally familiar, affordable care while keeping the practice financially viable.
Alsalam Clinic illustrates how displaced health professionals can recreate services in exile—bringing modern equipment, cultural understanding, and a commitment to care shaped by the politics and trauma that drove them from home.
Originally written in German.