For three years, Dr. Jamal Eltaeb faced heart-wrenching choices. Who should live and who risked dying? Should he operate without the necessary medication if it could save a life? How could he find fuel to power the hospital?
As war raged around him in Sudan, only one decision remained: to continue working.
This orthopedic surgeon was running Al Nao Hospital in Omdurman, just outside the capital, Khartoum, as control of the urban area passed from the hands of the Sudanese army to those of the paramilitary fighters of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
As the front line approached and the hospital overflowed with patients, some colleagues lost their composure and left.
Eltaeb, a naturally calm man, was one of the few surgeons who remained. Even when the hospital was bombed repeatedly. Even when most of the medical supplies were depleted.
He is one of the countless Sudanese who have mobilized to help while the world largely turns a blind eye, distracted by conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.
He has seen the bodies behind the estimates of tens of thousands of deaths, and what that means - day after day, in excruciating suffering - when the United Nations warns that his country's health system is on the verge of collapse.
Before the war, according to staff, Al Nao was a quiet hospital whose hundred or so beds remained empty most of the time.
But when fighting broke out in Khartoum and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) took control of large areas of the city, patients flocked in.
The hospital where Eltaeb worked, located elsewhere, closed shortly after the start of the war in April 2023, and he was transferred to Al Nao.
By July, most of the staff had fled, leaving him alone in charge.
With a handful of employees and volunteers, he fought to keep the facility running. Electricity was cut off for weeks, as the facility relied on the army for generator fuel. Medicines, such as antibiotics and painkillers, eventually ran out.
In August, a month after Eltaeb took office, the hospital was hit for the first time. "From that moment on, we knew we were a target… And since then, they have continued to target us ," he said.
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) then struck the hospital three more times. Normal life had collapsed. Making decisions was almost impossible.
On a particularly harrowing day in late 2024, he and his team rushed to try and save more than 100 wounded people after an airstrike hit a nearby market. Eight of them died.
"You choose... as if you could choose who will live and who will die ," he said.
Al Nao Hospital was one of the few hospitals to have survived the war; many others were not so lucky.
Nearly 40% of Sudanese hospitals are no longer functioning. Many have been stripped of their equipment or used as bases by armed groups.
The Sudanese army has since retaken the capital, and Al Nao remains one of the few functioning health centers in the region. Hospitals that were more severely damaged than Al Nao are in ruins.
