A doctor in good standing making just $350 per month? It may be hard to believe, but it’s true.
Dr. Tom Catena graduated as a medical doctor from Duke University School of Medicine in 1992, and from there seemingly did everything right. He had attended Duke on a U.S. Navy scholarship, and following his graduation completed an internship at the Naval Medical Center San Diego. He then joined the U.S. Navy and for four years served as a flight surgeon. During his final year with the Navy, Catena spent time in Kenya, where it became clear that missionary work would become a major part of his life.
After his discharge from the Navy in 1999, Catena began residency in family medicine at Union Hospital in Indiana, but during that time he participated in medical mission trips to Guyana and Honduras.
According to an article by Amy Lynch for NCAA.org, the experience of performing international mission work for the first time led Catena to decide to focus his efforts in Africa.
Leaving behind the comforts of home, he moved to rural Kenya, then on to Nairobi and South Sudan before settling into the Nuba Mountain region of central Sudan in 2008, where he helped to establish the Mother of Mercy Hospital.
“Dr. Tom”, as he is known by his patients, is the only surgeon within 200 miles, and he is the only option for surgical procedures for nearly a million people. He treats as many as 400 patients per day.
According to a piece entitled Gifts With Meaning by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, Dr. Catena gets paid $350 a month, working seven days a week.
Catena’s work is documented in the film The Heart of Nuba, directed and produced by Kenneth A. Carlson. The film reveals that Dr. Tom’s patients “come to him from hundreds of miles away on foot, in carts, or often cradled in their mother’s arms.”
Welcome to the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, an area of the world so void of humanitarian and media attention that years of war go ignored, and cries for help go largely unheard. Here, this lone American surgeon tends with equal compassion to patients ranging from malnutrition and leprosy, to grave wounds inflicted by the indiscriminate bombings ordered by their own president, Omar al-Bashir. When a government can attack defenseless men, women and children with supersonic bombers,and it doesn’t make anyone’s newswire, something is terribly awry. — from The Heart of Nuba Synopsis