Doctor and co-founder of African Mission Healthcare reveals life in Sudan's Nuba Mountains
Dr. Jon Fielder, co-founder of African Mission Healthcare, describes the conditions faced by Dr. Tom Catena at his hospital in Sudan's Nuba Mountains. American-born Catena is the only doctor in the Nuba Mountains.
The Nuba Mountains of Sudan may be the last place one would expect to find an Ivy League-educated doctor living among the people, but Dr. Tom Catena would not have it any other way.
A native of Amsterdam, New York, Catena attended Brown University. He played football and studied engineering.
Yet Catena, a self-described "cradle Catholic," became involved with the evangelical Christian group Campus Crusade for Christ and realized he wanted to dedicate his life to the mission field. That meant he probably would have to go into something other than engineering — medicine, he figured.
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Undeterred by the time and effort required, Catena took the necessary classes to meet the requirements for medical school admission. He later graduated from Duke University School of Medicine on a scholarship from the U.S. Navy.
"In 1999, I was finished with my obligations, finished with all my training," he told Fox News Digital in a phone interview from the Nuba Mountains.
Dr. Tom Catena, American-born, is the only doctor in the region of Sudan where he works; sometimes he sees hundreds of patients each day. He is always on call and remains buoyed by his deep faith, he told Fox News Digital in an interview. (African Mission Healthcare)
So he figured he would spend a year doing mission medicine in Kenya, then return to the United States, establish a practice and "get on with things."
After completing his residency and his required years with the Navy, Catena finally began work in the mission field.
"If you think Kenya's difficult and challenging, you should see how it is in Sudan."
"One year turned into two, which turned into five," he said. "And now it's been almost 25 years that I have been in Africa – the first seven-and-a-half years in Kenya, then 16 years here in Sudan, in the mountains."
While Catena was in Kenya, he kept meeting people who were either from or who had worked in Sudan.
"They kept saying, you know, 'If you think Kenya's difficult and challenging, you should see how it is in Sudan,'" he said.
His interest piqued, Catena shifted gears and decided he wanted to go to Sudan. How that was going to work, however, was another issue.
The Catena family is pictured here. Left to right, Nasima, Francis, baby Vincent Moses, and Tom. Both children were adopted. (Courtesy Dr. Tom Catena)
"I knew nothing about Sudan," he said.
"It was a huge country and there was a civil war that had been going on forever."
In Sudan to stay
While in Kenya, Catena met a U.S. Army surgeon named Dede Byrne, who was there filling in for another surgeon who had to briefly leave Kenya. Byrne, who is now Sr. Dede Byrne, told Catena she knew of a Catholic bishop who was building a hospital in Sudan.
"I got hold of [the bishop's] office. I started meeting with them," Catena said, setting the plans in motion for the establishment of the hospital and his eventual move to Sudan.
During the rainy season, the area is almost entirely cut off.
In 2008, Catena relocated to Sudan — he's there to stay. He married a nurse, Nasima, and they recently adopted two sons.
To say the Nuba Mountains, located in southern Sudan, are "remote" would be an understatement, Catena said. Traveling there from the United States can take nearly a week, he said, and the last part of the journey involves a trek across a dirt road.
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During the rainy season, the area is almost entirely cut off, he said.
The Nuba Mountains are "kind of Africa like it was, you know, 70, 80 years ago, 100 years ago," he said.
The "Catena Compound," as Dr. Tom Catena refers to his home in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, is pictured above. (Courtesy Dr. Tom Catena)
While other African countries have "gotten much more developed over the past 20, 30 years," Catena said, the Nuba Mountains have not.
"They're kind of like how Africa has always been," he said.
Catena and his family do not have running water, "don't really" have central power and do not have anything that requires electricity in his "little compound."
"It's a pretty basic setup," he said — with no bathroom, shower or even flush toilet.
"We've got to take care of anything that hits our door."
The Mother of Mercy Hospital, located in Gidel, Sudan, is the only hospital in an area with a population of more than 1 million. Catena sometimes sees hundreds of patients a day. He is always on call – because without him, there is nobody else.
"We've got to take care of anything that hits our door," he said.
The hospital has a "limited" lab, an X-ray machine and an ultrasound. It is powered by solar panels and a backup generator.
Dr. Tom Catena's patients, pictured here, come to him for every condition imaginable, he told Fox News Digital. (Courtesy Dr. Tom Catena)
"We don't have a CT scan or an MRI," he said – so sometimes he has to operate on a patient just to know what is happening internally.
However, a lack of modern medical equipment was not the biggest challenge facing the doctor, he said.
‘Really incredible’
The fractured education system in Sudan meant there were very few trained medical personnel.
When Catena arrived in 2008, there were 15 people working at the Mother of Mercy Hospital, Dr. Jon Fielder, co-founder of African Mission Healthcare, told Fox News Digital in a video interview from Kenya. (See the video at the top of this article, and another one just below as well.)
"Tom values every patient in front of him infinitely."
African Mission Healthcare is one of the organizations that supports the Mother of Mercy Hospital and other similar "mission" hospitals throughout Africa.
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The group assists the hospital "with medicines and supplies and training staff and infrastructure and fundraising," Fielder said.
The staff on opening day at Catena's hospital consisted of "a couple of Catholic nuns and Tom and about a dozen local staff," Fielder said.
"No one [other than Catena] had an education above eighth grade. Nobody was formally trained in health care."
In 2024, barely a decade and a half later, "they have 270 staff and over 50 are formally trained as health workers," Fielder said. "It's really incredible. There's a local training school there for students to become physician assistants and midwives."
"Tom," Fielder said, "is simply the most committed person that I know. He values every patient in front of him infinitely. And he works that way. He works endlessly. He's an incredibly talented physician."
The Nuba Mountains, Dr. Tom Catena said, are "kind of Africa like it was, you know, 70, 80 years ago, 100 years ago." They're still largely isolated from the rest of the country. (Courtesy Dr. Tom Catena)
Fielder added, "He works as much as necessary to get care to those who are sick and suffering and have nowhere else to go."
For Catena, his strong faith is the motivation for everything he does.
"My faith is the only thing that has kept me here," Catena told Fox News Digital. "I mean, without a doubt, I think if I didn't have that, I would have jumped ship a long time ago."
"I still have a feeling God is looking out for us."
Catena said his work is extremely difficult, exhausting and "there's way too much tragedy for anybody to bear by themselves."
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While the Nuba Mountains are largely isolated from the larger civil war in Sudan, there are still risks and sporadic fighting, he said. And being the only doctor for such a large population means that he has to do everything — from delivering babies to healing injuries received in war.
Despite all of this, Catena said, he and the people at his hospital are "very fortunate," he said.
When Dr. Tom Catena arrived in the Nuba Mountains in 2008, the newly established hospital had a staff of 15 and no trained medical professionals. Now, there are 270 staffers and 50 of them are formally trained in medicine. (African Mission Healthcare)
"Since I've gotten here in 2008, we've had priests here. So every day we have Mass," he said.
"I think without that opportunity to hear the word of God every day [and] receive the sacraments every day, I don't think I would have made it."
Even with a lifestyle and work environment that is unthinkable to most in his profession in the United States, Catena is steadfast in his beliefs.
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"God is in charge," he said. "I know no matter what happens here, God is here. God is in charge. God is looking after me."
"It's an incredible testament to faith and commitment and compassion."
And while Catena admits that having recently become a father has prompted him to "worry more now than I did," his faith remains.
"I still have a feeling God is looking out for us," he said.
Fielder concurred, saying the work of Catena and his team is akin to a masterpiece.
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"I've kind of said, you know, if you've seen the Pieta in Rome, which is this incredible work of art — I think, really, what the team has been able to do in the Nuba Mountains amid war and poverty and locusts and famines, you know, they've really hewn a beautiful work of art out of stone," he said.
"And it's an incredible testament to faith, commitment and compassion."
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