El Hadi Ahmed El Sheikh

El Sheikh was married and had four children. He died on 23 September 2009.

El Sheikh was also known for philanthropic work. Since 1990, He pioneered organising eye care campaigns and creating mobile eye care units that offered treatment for more than 23,000 Sudanese and refugees for free, with assistance of HelpAged, UK. However, his efforts were not always welcomed, and he was taken to court several times for operating on patients outside hospitals.

El Sheikh elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Ophthalmologists (FRCOphth) in 1990. In 1995, the National Sudanese Society for Eye Treatment named their annual prize after El Sheikh. The Sudanese government awarded him The Gold Medal for Arts and Literature and Az-Zubair Prize for Innovation and Scientific Excellence in 2003.

El Sheikh was involved in countless projects aimed to improve eye surgery with a keen interest in dacryocystorhinostomy and oculoplastic. El Sheikh worked on several projects with World Health Organization. He was the WHO expert and a member of the steering committee of Onchocerciasis. El Sheikh was the President of the Sudanese Ophthalmological Society (1979–1981), and since 1983, he was a member of the Executive Board of the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness.

However, after his brother's execution, El Sheikh decided to go to the UK, as he was awarded the World Health Organization (WHO) Research Fellow at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and an Honorary Senior Registrar position in the Moorfields Eye Hospital between 1973–1978. During that period, he completed epidemiology and medical statistics training at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (1975–1976), and conducted several fields and laboratory work before obtaining his PhD in 1978 from the University of London in 1978. Upon his return to Sudan, El Sheikh joined the University of Khartoum, and became a Professor of Ophthalmology in 1988, where he establishing the Department of Ophthalmology in 1994, and retired in 1998.

In 1962, aged 29, El Sheikh established Abu-Hamad Town Hospital and moved, as Registrar, to Khartoum Eye Hospital between 1962 and 1963, and Moorfields Eye Hospital, UK, between 1963–1964. He then acquired a Diploma of Ophthalmology from the Royal College of Physicians of London and the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1964. El Sheikh went back to Sudan, working at Khartoum Eye Hospital as Junior Eye Specialist, and then at Medani Hospital as a relief ophthalmologist, between 1964 and 1965, before joining the Department of Surgery, University of Khartoum as a Lecturer in Ophthalmology in 1967. He then became an Associate Professor in 1973.

El Sheikh first joined the University of Khartoum, but then left and joined Ain Shams University as his family that University of Khartoum was elitist and did not align with their values. El Sheikh graduated in 1959, and started his medical training at Ain Shams University in 1960 as a House-officer before leaving for Atbara Teaching Hospital in 1961 and joining as a Medical officer until 1962.

El Hadi Ahmed El Sheikh FRCOphth (Arabic: الهادي أحمد الشيخ, 28 June 1933–23 September 2009) was a Sudanese Professor of Ophthalmology at the Department of Surgery, University of Khartoum, and WHO's Research Fellow.

El Sheikh was born on 28 June 1933 in Shendi, Sudan, the youngest in a family of four sisters and brothers. One of his siblings was El Shafiei, a well-known Sudanese politician who was executed with Abdel Khaliq Mahjub in 1971 by Jaafar Nimeiry for their involvement in a coup d'état attempt. His family were Tiganiya Sufi, known for their hospitality and generosity, which would later shape El Sheikh's approach to medicine and views on treatment accessibility.