Evan Atar Adaha

Adaha was born in Torit, Eastern Equatoria in 1966 or 1967.[1][2] He attended primary school in Juba and attended university in Khartoum.[2] He won a scholarship to study medicine in Egypt, and received surgical training in Canada.[2]

After graduation, Adaha worked as a doctor in Alexandria,[2] Egypt, returning to Sudan in 1997 to work in Kurmuk, Blue Nile state during the Second Sudanese Civil War.[1][3] In 2011, violence from the war forced him to relocate to Bunj, Maban County, Upper Nile State.[1] Adaha and his patients carried medical supplies and equipment from Kurmuk to Maban by hand, during a month-long walk between the two locations, avoiding aerial bombardments from the Sudanese Air Force.[2] He set up the Maban Referral Hospital, colloquially known as Dr. Atar's Hospital, to provide healthcare to a surrounding population of 200,000 people, including 144,000 Sudanese refugees from the Blue Nile state; it is the only hospital in the state that provides surgical services.[3][4] The hospital has 120-beds, two operating theatres facility, a neonatal section, and a tuberculosis ward.[1] As of 2018, hospital had no blood bank, the x-ray machine was broken, the generators frequently break, anaesthesia capacity is limited and the theatres are lit with a single bulb.[2] Staff, in 2018, included two Kenyan and a Ugandan doctor supported by several administration staff and midwives primarily from Kenya and Uganda.[2] The hospital was donated an autoclave by Médecins Sans Frontières and received financial support from British members of parliament before getting support from the South Sudanese government.[2]

Adaha was 52 years old in 2018.[1]

He is married and with four children, who live in Nairobi.[2]