Yesterday I had the honor to attend a small private reception in NYC in honor of Dr. Mukwege, the Medical Director of the Panzi Hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo. As one of the top doctors in Africa performing surgeries on women who have been badly injured by the violence of war in the Congo, Dr. Mukwege is a true hero. He is one of the largest grantees of the Fistula Foundation, and spoke with a group of us firsthand about the tragic situation in the Congo.

When talking with him and then listening to him address the group, I was truly impressed by his humility and willingness to do this work. It puts him in an enormous amount of personal danger, and the task at hand is a grave one. Since the 1990s, bands of soldiers (including children) have been waging a war of rape and murder in the Congo, particularly targeted at women. Millions of people have been killed and the atrocities that have been committed along the way are pretty mind-boggling. The consequence of this level and type of violence are that entire communities are traumatized by what they have to see - people flee when possible, social networks collapse, and the victims feel like they have nowhere to go except to hide. The U.N. does have a large peacekeeping mission in the region, but it has not been enough to stop the mass rapes of Congolese women.

Here's an excerpt about Dr. Mukwege's work from Pulitzer Prize winner Nick Kristof, who writes for the NY Times.

(WARNING: this is difficult to read)

One of the people the militia had kidnapped was a doctor who was forced to treat the soldiers. The doctor, seeing that Jeanne was close to dying in obstructed childbirth, cut her open with an old knife, without anesthetic, and removed the stillborn baby. Jeanne was delirious and almost dead, so the militia dumped her beside a road.

“She was completely destroyed inside,” said another doctor, Denis Mukwege, who saved her life after she was brought here to Bukavu. Dr. Mukwege, 54, presides over the 400-bed Panzi Hospital, supported by the European Union and private groups like the Fistula Foundation. He is sometimes mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize for his heroic efforts to fight the war and heal its victims.

Dr. Mukwege operated on Jeanne nine times over three years to repair the fistulas that were causing her to leak wastes. Finally he succeeded, and she returned to her village to live with her grandmother.

“He told me to stay away from men for three months,” Jeanne remembers, to give her body time to heal. But three days after she returned to the village, the militia came again and raped again. The fistula reopened.

Jeanne, kept naked in the forest and stinking because her internal injuries had reopened, finally managed to escape and eventually found her way back to Panzi Hospital. Dr. Mukwege has already started a second round of surgeries on her, but there is so little tissue left that it is not clear she can ever be continent again.

About 12 percent of the raped women he treats have contracted syphilis, and 6 percent have H.I.V. He does what he can to repair their injuries and help them heal — until the next time.
“Sometimes I don’t know what I am doing here,” Dr. Mukwege said despairingly. “There is no medical solution.” The paramount need, he says, is not for more humanitarian aid for Congo, but for a much more vigorous international effort to end the war itself.