CRS program for doctors in Congo helps ease plight of female victims

Published: 2008-02-21

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (CNS) -- A church-run training program for rural doctors in the Democratic Republic of Congo has helped ease the plight of women in the war-torn eastern region where sexual violence is common, an aid worker said. Because of the program, run by the U.S. bishops' Catholic Relief Services, doctors are able to help the seriously wounded, mostly rape victims, at village hospitals, said Lane Hartill, regional information officer for CRS in West Africa. Otherwise, doctors would have to tell patients to walk long distances to bigger centers "on almost impassable roads in atrocious condition," he told Catholic News Service in a mid-February telephone interview from Dakar, Senegal. Dr. Freddy Mubuto, 32, whom Hartill got to know on a recent visit to Congo from Dakar, where he is based, worked alone for two years at Nyamibungu hospital in South Kivu province before another doctor joined him this year. Mubuto found it heartbreaking to refer his patients to Panzi hospital in Bukavu, eastern Congo's top medical facility, knowing that most of them would have to walk the 135 miles or be carried through the mud on "what resembles a goat track more than a road," Hartill said.

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