Canadian Heroes Confront Horrors of South Sudan Homeland

02/14/2014

The killing had begun. Bullets were flying, armed rebels were advancing and the terrified hospital staff had fled to the bush. Inside the abandoned hospital, three Canadian doctors refused to leave.

Even as the fighting raged toward them, they performed an emergency cesarean section to save a pregnant woman’s life. Then they ran and hid as bullets began thwacking into the hospital in the town of Bor, South Sudan.

For one Canadian doctor, that emergency surgery was the last act of a heroic life. A few days later, on Christmas Day, Thomas Lul was killed in crossfire as he ventured out of a United Nations camp for displaced people.

The Canadian government refuses to confirm his death, citing privacy issues, and so the doctor’s fate has never been reported publicly. But his death has been verified by the Calgary-based charity that helped sponsor his work in South Sudan.

The charity, Samaritan’s Purse Canada, describes Dr. Lul as a courageous and self-sacrificing man who gave up a peaceful life in Canada to help the impoverished people of his homeland. He was one of 15 doctors who left Canada several years ago to work in South Sudan.

The full article continues at on The Globe and Mail’s website.