Giving Compass' Take:

• Telling his story to News Deeply's Sam Mednick, nursing assistant Bosco describes the physical and emotional toll endured while tending to the mothers and infants of Kapoeta, South Sudan.

• This country faces relentless conflict and thin resources. What can international aid groups do to help people like Bosco bring much-needed care to their communities?

• Here's more on the effort to make childbirth safer in South Sudan.


I work seven days a week, 24 hours a day. There’s no time for rest and there are few days off. In other places, nurses usually work in shifts, but I can’t because we don’t have enough staff.

When it’s busy, I wake up every hour during the night to do rounds because if I miss one hour I often find three or four children who have fallen sick with fever or diarrhea. There’s a bed inside the center where I usually sleep if there are a lot of children, otherwise I live across the road so I can run over and do checks in the middle of the night.

When I feel exhausted I think about the African saying: “An elephant tusk is heavy but it can carry,” which means that the work is tiresome but you have to do it to save lives. This is why I do what I do.

I’m the only nurse in one of the stabilization centers for malnourished children in Kapoeta, which is run by the aid organization Save the Children. I’ve been working as a nurse for six years and have been in this center for almost a year, together with one other doctor’s assistant. We work with malnourished kids who have medical complications such as edema, and children who are underweight for their height.

Read the full article about what it's like to be a children's nurse in South Sudan by Sam Mednick at News Deeply.