> Our History
> Dr. Mukwege |
- Born on March 1st, 1955
- 3rd of a family of 9 children
- His father is retired Pastor of a Pentecostal church of Bukavu (Swedish mission).
- Married to Kaboyi Mapendo Madeleine and father of five children (Alain, Patricia, Sylvie, Lisa, Denise).
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When he was young, he accompanied his father on his pastoral visits where he first had contact with patients.
His first impression was that he wanted to help the patients in addition to praying with them, to assist them medically.
After his baccalaureate, he studied medicine in Burundi where after he finished, he worked at the Christian hospital of Lemera in South-Kivu DR Congo, he was shocked when he realized the difficulty of childbirth for the women in the rural milieu because these women are brought to the hospital riding on a donkey, after having bled out from their difficulty during childbirth in residence.
Others quite simply came to die in the hospital because they waited to long after laboring for hours unsuccessfully.
The surviving patients left with serious genital lesions. He decided to study gynaecology/obstetrics at the CHU of Angers in France.
In 1989, Dr. Mukwege settled at the Hospital of Lemera close to these women where he will install a service of gynaecology/obstetrics after training the support staff.
This service became known in the area and beyond the borders of the country. Unfortunately during the first civil war of Congo in 1996 the hospital was completely destroyed.
As a survivor from Lemera, Dr. Mukwege settled in Bukavu, there he
still noted the suffering of the patients in the Southern part of
the town of Bukavu without medical facilities to help women during childbirth.
From these experiences the idea is born to build a maternity ward with an operating room at Panzi.
But as early as the inauguration, he noted that the women victims of sexual violence are numerous and the numbers were rising.
Thus the idea was born to create services specialized for the
assumption of responsibility of women victims of sexual violence.
Currently this service receives on average 10 women per day and 30%
of those will undergo a major surgery. The task becoming increasingly
difficult, Dr. Mukwege is working on training the nurses,
obstetricians and doctors for this end. This formation is done in
collaboration with international experts of Fistula Hospital of Addis
Ababa in surgery of vaginal rebuilding.
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