An ante-natal clinic in the north east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (Photo: © Francesca Elloway/CMS) “Congo’s silent harvest of death” is what BBC world affairs correspondent Mark Doyle calls it.
His radio documentary, broadcast last week on the World Service, opened with the shocking scene of a young woman having a miscarriage in a canoe on the River Congo.
Doyle diagnoses the collapse of Congo’s health-care system as a legacy of the appalling civil war.
Compared to other African countries, Congo, in the last decade, has suffered 5.4 million more deaths than would normally be expected, according to a report by International Rescue Committee medics featured in the programme.
Most of these were from preventable causes.
The documentary made grave listening.
One CMS mission partner, who works daily at the heart of this crisis, assesses the situation.
Patients waiting to be seen at a clinic in the Democratic Republic of Congo(Photo: © Francesca Elloway/CMS)Dr Francesca Elloway supervises a group of health centres in the far north-east of Congo. She has worked there for the past 14 years.
“It’s true that the major cause of these deaths is the lack of resources,” she says.
In theory, medical work in Congo has a good infrastructure based on the concept of health zones – each run by a doctor with support staff. But this is qualified by the lack of prospects in rural areas.
Discouraged talent"The doctors whom I've got to know over the years have often been very willing and talented but, with virtually no resources to do their work or pay salaries, they become very discouraged — one of the main reasons why few have stayed in post for longer than a year.
“The vast majority of doctors choose to work in the big cities, where there is potential for private work and to earn a decent salary, so, in rural areas, almost all health centres are run by nurses,” Francesca says.
This is where an “energetic and positive” Congo comes into play, as highlighted recently on this site by fellow CMS mission partner Louise Wright.
In the vanguard of this health-care battle are a courageous band of “nurse practitioners”, trained by a national programme to work in these isolated situations without doctors.
They carry huge responsibility, and could be faced at any time with an emergency similar to that presented by the young woman in the canoe.
Francesca comments: “I’ve often thought how I’d hate to be a midwife stuck out in an isolated health centre with no means of transferring an obstetric emergency.”
It would be readily agreed in the area where Francesca works that the best medical care is found in church health-centres and hospitals – mainly because they usually have access to outside funding to help with buying basic medicines and equipment and to motivate staff with regular salaries.
“It’s great that the Church can reach out to the Congolese and show God’s love in this way, but it will be even better when all health institutions have the resources to offer adequate and affordable basic health care.”
BackgroundRead more from Dr Francesca Elloway on this story. Related BBC links
Why they're dying in Congo — World Service documentary Congo’s silent harvest of death — BBC News