At most hospitals, the red circular signs on the walls are there to tell you not to smoke, but at Lopiding hospital, in Lokichokio in northern Kenya, they are there to warn that guns are not allowed.
Inside, the staff are well used to treating gun wounds - since 1987 the hospital, and its heroic team of multinational surgeons and nurses, have been treating victims from the violence across the border in southern Sudan.
A Canadian/Japanese film, War Hospital, which had its UK premiere last night at the Sheffield International Documentary Film Festival, shows the real human cost of the violence. Shot in cinema verite, the camera does not flinch from one man who is suffering from a gunshot wound in his forehead, or from Deng, an elderly man who comes in with a days-old spear wound, and who would certainly have died if he had not been flown into Lopiding.
The reaction of Sujoy, writing on Livejournal, seems typical of bloggers who have seen the film. Sujoy writes about perhaps the most moving scene where a group of dozens of women sing "spirit of life, that is our prayer" after recovering from fistula surgery:
"In this moment, you realise that although life is unstable for them outside of the hospital grounds, they still have the resolve to live ... The war doesn't consume the hospital; instead, it's the raison d'etre for it. In the end, I am reminded how life is fleeting. But even in humanity's darkest hour, the spirit to live is still present."
