Wanted: _____ologists

Dr. Richard is a 38-year-old anaesthesiologist working at Rutshuru Hospital in North Kivu province, and he's the only anaesthesiologist on staff. The hospital's surgeons perform 10-20 operations a day, around the clock, and Dr. Richard is stretched.

He has three nurses working under him who have anaesthesiological training, but Dr. Richard, who is Congolese and was trained at the University of Kinshasa Medical School, bears responsibility for their work, and more often than not, he attends in person.

A shortage of doctors in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, combined with an overall very basic level of medical care, means the vast majority of the country's medical school graduates (not a huge number anyway) go straight into general practice rather than undertaking a specialist residency.

The money is better in general practice (though by the standards of almost every other country on earth it's not good), so why spend an extra few years learning to be a gynecologist or endocrinologist or otolaryngologist? Or anaesthesiologist?

Perhaps in order to work overseas, for a lot more money, in a country where you're unlikely to be shot and killed because you have a job and perhaps own a bicycle and are therefore "rich"? No one would blame you.

The D.R.C.'s "medical brain drain" is, like so many of the country's other problems, rooted in the decade of war that has thus far cost 5.5 million lives, and prevents Congolese from establishing a society in which they can live without fear and work toward realizing their dreams.

No one can blame those who have the opportunity for choosing to seek a better future overseas, but equally, few can be unimpressed by those like Dr. Richard who choose to stay, to work for little pay and often at great personal risk to reclaim their countries from the depths of anarchy and despair.