A day in the life of a medical student from Sudan

Alaa Dafallah is a final year medical student in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. The city has a population of more than five million and is the fourth largest metropolitan area in Africa.

Dafallah participates in medical missions where healthcare professionals and students visit rural areas for around a week. “Twice a year we pick states with poor access to health, and often without electricity,'' she explains. “In a village in Kordofan state, we set up our mobile clinic in a school that basically was made up of four walls put together. It shows you how unfair the world is.”

The doctors who join offer free clinical visits, but because Dafallah is still a student, she’s responsible for health promotion and discusses breast cancer, female genital mutilation, and communicable diseases with community members. The missions have been organised for almost 20 years, with 100 medical, laboratory, and public health students and 20 doctors involved in each mission. The project is …