KAMPALA — After civil war forced Samuel Dhol Ayeun to flee South Sudan as a teenager to neighboring Uganda in 2013, memories of watching friends die of preventable diseases due to inadequate medical care inspired his goal of becoming a doctor.
Now 27, Ayeun has graduated from medical school and is busy attending to COVID-19 and other patients at the prestigious Mulago National Referral Hospital in the Ugandan capital Kampala.
“I made it,” he told Reuters this week during his shift.
“Being a refugee, it’s not a punishment,” he said. “It is an opportunity to continue with your dreams outside your country.”
Ayeun and his family are among an estimated one million S…
Keep on reading: ‘I made it,’ says South Sudanese who fled to Uganda