JUBA, Jan. 24 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese doctor specializing in ear, nose and throat (ENT) treatment has brought much-needed relief to a rural family in South Sudan after months of pain and uncertainty in their search for specialized medical care.
Viola Kiden Zakaria, a 22-year-old secondary school student in Juba, had been tirelessly seeking treatment for her mother, Agustina Juan, 50, since October 2024. Juan, a resident of Mangala village, about 75 kilometers from South Sudan's capital, had been suffering from severe pain caused by a nasal tumor and complications from the flu.
Despite visiting several private hospitals, Zakaria could not afford the payment of 2,000 U.S. dollars required for the surgery to remove her mother's tumor, known as "inverted papilloma," a benign epithelial tumor that grows in the nasal cavity or paranasal sinuses.
"When I brought my mother to Juba Teaching Hospital, she was feeling immense pain on the right side of her head, and she could not sleep, and also she was having smelly discharge from the nose," Zakaria said during a recent interview with Xinhua.
Juan's condition began to improve after she was examined by Wang Chuanxi, an ENT specialist of the 12th batch of the Chinese medical team, at Juba Teaching Hospital in late November 2024.
Wang promptly recommended surgical intervention after confirming the tumor's presence through a series of tests conducted by a team of Chinese and South Sudanese doctors. The Chinese doctor also discovered that Juan had diabetes, which needed to be stabilized before the procedure.
The surgery, led by Wang, was successfully performed on Monday, taking less than an hour to complete. Juan was provided with antibiotics and diabetes medications as part of her postoperative care.
"My mother is now feeling somehow better, though she still feels some little pain. She is now able to eat food and drink water without any problem," Zakaria said, expressing her relief. "She used to plough her farm before she fell sick, but now, with the improvement in her condition, she might go back to the village and resume her work."
Wang confirmed that the tumor could only be treated through surgery, which had been carried out successfully.
Michael Deng Achier, a general practitioner who assisted in the operation, explained that Juan's access to medical care had been severely limited due to the long distance between her village and Juba. "In the past three months, she had even been unable to get any drugs for diabetes," he noted.
Over the past 12 years, 180 Chinese medical personnel have served in South Sudan, treating more than 80,000 patients, performing over 1,400 surgeries, and rescuing 2,692 critically ill individuals.
Juan's story is just one among many, illustrating the lifesaving impact of the long-standing partnership between China and South Sudan in the field of healthcare. ■