Evan Atar Adaha
Ran the only working hospital in a war zone for two decades, alone when he had to
Evan Atar Adaha trained as a physician and was working in Egypt when Sudan's second civil war drew him back to treat the wounded near the front lines in what is now South Sudan. Working conditions were primitive and dangerous: his hospital in Kurmuk was bombed by Sudanese government aircraft, and rather than leave the region, he relocated across the border into what is now South Sudan and rebuilt again, eventually establishing Maban's Bunj hospital in Upper Nile State.
For years he was frequently the only qualified surgeon serving a population that swelled with refugees fleeing renewed fighting in Sudan's Blue Nile region, performing operations by lantern light during power cuts and training nurses and clinical officers to fill gaps that no other doctor was available to fill. The hospital he built now serves more than 200,000 people, including refugees living in nearby camps, offering surgery, maternity care and treatment for war wounds that would otherwise mean death or a journey of days to reach help.
In 2018 the UN refugee agency awarded him the Nansen Refugee Award for more than two decades of service, prize money he said he would put straight back into equipment and staff training rather than keep for himself.