Reaching the Nuba Mountains in the south of Sudan is not easy. The suffering of the local population seems endless. Dr. Tom Catena has witnessed it all. The sole surgeon in the local Mother of Mercy hospital that serves the entire region, this devout American Catholic came to Sudan in the peaceful years preceding the war, and then refused to leave the people once the civil war broke out in 2011. 

 

He leaves the Nuba Mountains only in utter necessity. But this month, Dr. Catena will fly to Armenia in order to attend the Aurora Prize weekend of events and the Award Ceremony in Yerevan. He was nominated last year as well. But in 2016, he didn’t attend the ceremony. He couldn’t. This year, however, the people of the Nuba Mountains will be able to rely on three Armenian doctors who will be substituting for him, and, like him, will save lives.

 

Tom Catena

 

Lieutenant Colonel Gevorg Voskanyan, Major Hayk Hovhannisyan and Armine Barkhudaryan - did not waver for a second when told that they are urgently needed in a remote corner of the world. 

“This isn’t my first mission. Twice in 2010 and 2013 I have served in Afghanistan as a member of the Armenian peace-keeping forces,” says Major Hayk Hovhannisyan, Deputy Chief of the Surgery Unit at the Central Clinical Military Hospital of Armenia’s Defense Ministry. “It didn’t take long to decide, considering the framework and urgency of the mission. To me it would be unacceptable to decline.”

 

“It is impossible to underestimate the value of humanism for physicians. I cannot be satisfied working under relatively easy conditions of peace while I see there are committed people who are serving in the most dangerous places and conditions, regardless of their ethnicity or religion,” observed Lieutenant Colonel Gevorg Voskanyan, chief surgeon at the Central Clinical Military Hospital of Armenia, who has served 23 years as a military doctor.

 

In Sudan, Gevorg Voskanyan and Hayk Hovhannisyan will be joined by Armine Barkhudaryan, who is on a humanitarian mission in the hospital of Malindi, Kenya, where she is much needed. “Every detail of Tom Catena’s story is inspiring, I don’t even know what to highlight. Both of us are doctors, yet it was very difficult for me to acknowledge where he is now, versus where I am. The person with the same profession as me risks his life, he serves so many patients, lives in those harsh conditions of war, and what about me, I thought?” 

Armine Barkhudaryan

 

“The feeling that you save lives is crucial for a doctor and gives an inner strength that you cannot substitute by anything else. Sometimes it cannot even be described by mere words,” says Doctor Voskanyan. 

“You begin to understand and assess the risks when you grow as a professional and see your skills required in places where risk levels are high,” says Hayk Hovhannisyan with the sober-mindedness of a soldier. “You aren’t alone there; you bear the responsibility for the health and wellbeing of the people you are out to help. That is your motivation.”