Carlow nurse sets her Goal in Sudan 

CARLOW nurse Lily Cummins recently departed for war-torn Sudan to lend her expertise to the aid effort there. 

She is working in conjunction with the Irish aid agency Goal. Lily, who hails originally from Nurney in Carlow, has joined a team of GOALies in Abyei Province, in the Western Kordofan region of North Sudan. 

Lily has spent the past five-and-a-half years nursing in Beaumont Hospital in Dublin. She has already worked with an Italian aid agency in Afghanistan and her experiences there inspired her to travel abroad again. 

"I was very surprised by my experience in Afghanistan because it was so positive. These countries face such extreme hard-ships like war, famine and droughts but the people you meet are amazing", she said. 

"They might not have had much but they always shared whatever they did have with us", she added. 
The vulnerable people of Sudan have faced numerous hardships over the past 20 years. Famine and war have ravaged the country. It currently has the largest number of displaced people in the world. In the Darfur region of western Sudan where a conflict has been raging for the past two years, at least 70,000 people have been killed and a further two million have been driven from their homes. GOAL is working throughout Sudan, where it has established feeding programmes and primary healthcare services. 

Lily is working alongside numerous Irish doctors and nurses who have set up both static and mobile primary healthcare clinics to visit the more remote areas of the country. It is hoped this will help combat the fact that many women walk for days to bring their malnourished children to a hospital or feeding centre. GOAL also runs health education programmes throughout Sudan, training health workers who will pass their skills onto the rest of the community. 

If you would like to support GOAL's work overseas please contact 01 2809779 or GOAL, PO Box 19, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin.