Marco Sutera hails from Gibellina in Sicily, but for the time being, the 31-year-old's home is the capital of the Central African Republic, Bangui, where he has temporarily moved to help impoverished children.

A pediatric resident at the University of Trieste, Sutera will be working for six months at the Complexe hospitalier universitaire pédiatrique in Bangui with the NGO Medici con l'Africa (Doctors with Africa) Cuamm.

Medical internship on Lampedusa with migrant children

Working in Africa had been a dream of the Sicilian even before he started in medical school. The decision to make it a reality came after meeting with Cuamm operators in college.

During this period, Sutera also interned at the local health clinic on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, where migrants – mostly departing from North Africa – often arrive with serious health needs resulting from journeys in overcrowded and unseaworthy boats. "I visited many migrant children there and wanted to continue this experience in Africa," Sutera said.

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The Bangui children's hospital has 300 beds. "Here, we deal with at least 100 new patients every day, all red or yellow codes," the resident doctor said, referring to color-coded triage tags assigned to seriously-ill patients.

"There is a lot of malaria here, children arrive in a coma and we are not always able to save them," he explained.

'In other contexts, we could have done more'

After witnessing eight children die within three weeks, Sutera said he was deeply upset, especially because "in other contexts and with more equipment, we would have been able to do something more."

In Bangui, some medical services need to be paid for privately, while others are provided for free by the hospital. At times, there are no medicines or ventilators available to treat the children, says Sutera.

"Outside the hospital there is a private dialysis center, but not all families can afford it," he said.

Sutera plans to return to Sicily to work as a pediatrician. "It's another world here, full of life and death," he said, adding, "I think that, compared with our world, this is absurd, because you see so many children die who could easily have been treated."

"What concerns me is the inequality, or how much we spend in Italy for certain medical treatments, and then there are countries like this one that have nothing."