Dr Denis MUKWEGE

  • Dr Denis MUKWEGE
© Dr. Denis
Chief executive officer (ceo)
Principal country concerned : Column : History/society

Dr. Denis Mukwege is the director of Panzi Hospital in eastern Congo, but to the multitude of female patients that see him, beside being their physician, he's a brother, father, counselor, protector, confidant to many.

Dr. Mukwege has treated 21,000 women during the Congo's 15-year war, some of them more than once, performing up to 10 surgeries a day during his 18-hour working days.

There is a war against women in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and rape - used in the same fashion an artillery shell is - has become the weapon of choice; a weapon of mass destruction of women, their families and whole communities.

Born on March 1st, 1955, he is the 3rd of a family of 9 children. His father is a retired Pastor of a Pentecostal church of Bukavu (Swedish mission). Dr. Mukwege is married to Kaboyi Mapendo Madeleine and is the father of five children (Alain, Patricia, Sylvie, Lisa, Denise).

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. There he was shocked when he realized the difficulty of childbirth for the women in the rural milieu. Encouraged by this, he decided to study gynaecology/obstetrics at the CHU of Angers in France.

In 1989, Dr. Mukwege settled at the Hospital of Lemera where he installed 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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