Shimaa Mahmoud puts on a face mask. Before pulling on latex gloves, she turns up the music on her computer. Gentle melodies blend with Quranic verses in Arabic.

Then the 29-year-old dentist opens the waiting room door to welcome the next patient.

Abdalla Ibrahim Mohammed, an older Sudanese man with a swollen cheek, enters and lies down in the dentist's chair.

"I have a big problem with my teeth," he says, explaining that he has been to the dentist several times since 1990 and has had a few molars extracted.

"Now the filling in another one fell out as I was eating," he adds, pointing to one of his back molars.

But as a refugee living in exile without work, he cannot afford treatment.

"I've been to many hospitals. But it's better here," he tells DW, adding that the doctors are better and he gets the treatment for free. "If I tell my story, it's not a problem."

Mahmoud's dental practice is located on the ground floor of the Alsalam Clinic in Uganda's capital, Kampala: a three‑story building in the Kabalagala district where many Sudanese refugees have settled.

Since the war in Sudan broke out in 2023 between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), almost 100,000 Sudanese have fled to Uganda.

The East African country currently hosts around 1.8 million refugees, more than any other country on the continent.

Most Sudanese men and women who need treatment come to the Alsalam Clinic, where more than a dozen doctors from Sudan practice.

The dentist adjusts the dental chair. A flat-screen monitor is mounted above it — all state-of-the-art equipment that is rarely seen in Ugandan clinics.

Mahmoud checks the elderly man's teeth using an intraoral camera, which can capture detailed images of inside the mouth.

"We must always keep the war in mind," she says, adding that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental health issues can affect the teeth.

The dentist notes that many people grind their teeth at night as a result of stress and trauma.

"Their gums are usually neglected, and those affected no longer drink clean water," she explains.

From revolution to refuge

Mahmoud is aware of the issues as she, too, had to flee headlong when the war in Sudan broke out ― and she couldn't even pack her toothbrush. Despite her young age, Mahmoud has already gone through a lot.

When people took to the streets in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, in 2019, demanding the end of the regime of Sudan's then strongman Omar al-Bashir, she was at the forefront, she recounts.

"I led most of the activities at my university and was one of the civilians demonstrating for their rights during the protests," she tells DW. 

To this day, the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors remains one of the strongest factions within the Sudanese Professionals' Association, the trade union association that spearheaded the 2019 revolution against al-Bashir.  

It was primarily doctors who helped establish the so-called resistance committees and organize the protests in the city's neighborhoods, providing care to wounded demonstrators.

Mahmoud was in her final year of medical school in Khartoum at the time, and says she was particularly committed to women's rights.

"Back then, it was still forbidden for women to wear trousers in my country," she says, pointing to her frayed jeans, which she says she bought back then and still wears today. "After 2019, we finally got the right to wear them."

At that moment, Dr. Assadig Ibrahim pokes his head through the door. The 42-year-old is a senior physician and one of the three partners who smuggled their savings out of Sudan and invested them in the new clinic in Uganda.

Mahmoud speaks with him in Arabic, laughing happily. It's immediately clear that the two are friends.

Two days a week for refugees, three days for paying Ugandans

Ibrahim comes from the Sudanese region of Darfur. After completing his studies, he and some colleagues opened their own clinic in el-Fasher, the region's largest city. But with the outbreak of war, the clinic was looted and destroyed by the RSF militia.

Ibrahim was fortunate to have savings held in an account and a brother in Canada who helped him to start anew.

"When we arrived in Uganda, we found ourselves jobless and we were thinking why we couldn't establish a clinic here," he recounts.

Together with three partners — all doctors from Sudan — he invested in the rundown clinic in Kabalagala. They took over the management and purchased brand-new, modern equipment.

"We encountered many Sudanese who had difficulty communicating with the Ugandans because Sudanese only speak Arabic," he said. The official, most widely spoken language in Uganda is English.

In the crowded waiting room, veiled women with children sit next to elderly men in robes and turbans; some Ugandans are also among them. The signs in the hallways are in Arabic and English.

"We want to continue the spirit and the role we doctors played in the revolution in our homeland, even in exile," Ibrahim tells DW, sharing his vision that included offering two days of free treatment for war refugees, and three days for paying patients.

The plan seems to be working. The clinic has long since made a name for itself, among Sudanese refugees as well as well-to-do Ugandans.

This article was originally written in German.