Mobile Clinics ... Mohammed Goes To The Mountain

During my short time in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) I visited nearly a dozen Medecins Sans Frontieres-operated and -supported clinics and hospitals in Kinshasa and North Kivu and Ituri provinces. I spent a day with a nurse providing ambulance service to the area surrounding a rural hospital, and I visited a mobile clinic operated by MSF out of its Kabizo clinic.

MSF operates mobile clinics in the DRC (and elsewhere) in large part because there is next to no public transportation in that country.Most people, if they need to get to a hospital or clinic, walk there. That may take hours, or it may take days. The government-run rural health clinics in the DRC are for the most part extremely basic, short on medicine and equipment and trained medical personnel. Basic supplies such as rubber gloves can be hard to find. As a result, where MSF can provide regular support to local clinics, the quality of medical care in those communities is greatly improved. If the mountain won't come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain.

The mobile clinic I visited in Upper Tongo is held twice a week between 0800-1500, with two doctors/nurses treating around 100 patients a day for the complete range of Congolese ailments – malaria, cholera, measles, diarrhea, respiratory infections and malnutrition. Patients with urgent medical problems, e.g. gunshot wounds, will find a way (motorcycle taxi, MSF ambulance) to get to the nearest hospital (in this case, Rutshuru, a few hours away from Tongo by car). Around 50 percent of patients at the Upper Tongo clinic are internally displaced people (IDPs), and there are around 3,000 IDPs in the region immediately surrounding the village.

In the last photograph above, the girl with the cast on her left arm is named Solange. She broke her arm while fleeing an attack by armed gunmen on the fields her family was working and had the cast put on at the hospital in Rutshuru. She lives in Tongo with her parents, five sisters and brother, and was at the clinic to have her arm checked by the doctor. She was a cute and very self-possessed little girl, and I hope her arm is healing well.

[In the third photograph are a couple of guys from MSF's Kabizo operation. On the left is Gaspard, the administrator, and on the right is Jean, the assistant logistician.]