(13 May 2020) LEAD IN:
Street art memorialises Sudanese-British doctors who died after contracting the coronavirus in the United Kingdom.
STORY-LINE:
Sudan, while battling an outbreak at home, is also mourning its sons who died fighting the coronavirus abroad.
On the streets of Khartoum, one artist is trying to raise awareness about the virus' dangers but also commemorate the sacrifice of health workers who have died in the fight against it.
Her murals depict different faces of the country's ethnic makeup, with messages reading "stay home", in two dialects.
Aseel Diyab is an artist who up until now had been working on portraits of the people who died in protests.
But amid the pandemic, she has shifted her focus.
"This is the same idea: these are martyrs who died fighting the disease, and also they are members of our 'white army' who are fighting and facing this in their work, in order to help treat us all," she says.
"And in the end, they died for our sake," she adds.
Though Sudan has some 1,164 confirmed cases and 64 deaths attributed to the new coronavirus, some of its citizens have been on the vanguard of the pandemic in other countries.
In the United Kingdom, two Sudanese-British citizens Dr. Amged el-Hawrani and Dr. Adil el-Tayyar died after contracting the coronavirus.
They were both specialist doctors in the country's National Health Service.
Now, Diyab is trying to show how proud their birth country is of them.
She also wants to instill some hope in the people who see her art.
"The idea is to give people something to be optimistic about, that we can overcome this disease," she says.
The family of one of the doctors is still coming to terms with his death.
Hassan el-Tayyar was hit hard by the news that his brother, who had lived in the UK for decades, was gone.
He said he worked hard to make sure his final wish, to be buried next to his father, was granted.
Sudan's health care system has been weakened by decades of war and sanctions.
The country of 43 million people is still reeling from last year's uprising that toppled longtime ruler Omar al-Bashir.
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