When Dr Annie Lin Sheng Yi first arrived in Tawila, Sudan, after a three-day journey from Chad, she realised immediately that this would be the most challenging mission of her career.

The Taiwanese anaesthetist, deployed by Doctors Without Borders, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), had already served in Afghanistan and Sierra Leone, but nothing prepared her for Tawila, a remote, dusty settlement with a hospital so bare-bones that even basic diagnostic tools were missing.

Still, this facility, with its limited equipment and only two operating theatres, was the...