FREE TREATMENTS FOR PEOPLE IN NEED

The Goma Hospital aims to reach people in the immediate vicinity who live in the poorest quarters of Goma in the simplest of circumstances. The four volunteer doctors and seven helpers currently treat around 300 to 500 patients per month. Many are given medication or vaccinations, and some with minor wounds are treated. All difficult cases must currently be referred to the five large hospitals - by patient transport by motorcycle.
The aim of the Goma Hospital is to reach the 90% poor residents and their families who cannot afford treatment by a doctor or in one of the five larger hospitals. First of all, basic care is sought, which should also include vaccinations and awareness-raising campaigns for girls and pregnant women.
The diseases that the outpatient clinic treats now and in the future are the infectious diseases malaria, typhus (salmonella), gastritis and urinary tract infections. After the renovation has been completed, surgical cases will also be treated (hernias, peritonitis, prostatic hypertrophy, goiter, hyperthyroidism and plastic surgery, as well as gynecological diseases and obstetric interventions). Here, too, the need is enormous. About 1% of the Congolese with tumors and the consequences of burns require plastic-reconstructive treatment - the North and South Kivu catchment area comprises a total of 12 million inhabitants. The west of Rwanda and all of Burundi can also benefit from the planned special hospital.
After 24 years of experience with the Nepal Hospital (www.nepalhospital.de) founded by Interplast Germany, the most important prerequisite is the reliability and commitment of the doctors there in the country with 100 million inhabitants, which is characterized by difficult circumstances and forgotten by the West.

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SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT THROUGH LOCAL TRAINING
AND INTERNATIONAL APPLICATIONS

In the Goma Hospital, permanent further training is to be set up by Interplast teams and other specialist doctors from Germany. At the same time, the first doctors are to be sent to Rwanda and Uganda for further training in their hoped-for specialist areas. There Prof. Lemperle personally convinced himself of the great difference in medical training in contrast to the medical emergency in Goma and in the whole of the Congo. In numerous conversations with the pastor of the Church of the Nazarene and the medical director Dr. Zibona and the Frankfurt “Church in Action”, which has been active in Goma since 1992, began a cooperation over the past five years. The aim of the cooperation is to improve surgical care for the people in Goma. So far, the training of three doctors to become surgeons in Benin, Kinshasa and Bukavu has been financed by the B. Braun Foundation, as well as the medical studies of eight students via Interplast.
However, the prerequisite for the further training of local doctors to become specialists and the simultaneous further training of local doctors, midwives, nurses and mobile nurses is a functioning hospital, which can perform its outpatient and inpatient tasks after completion of the construction work from autumn 2021.

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” (LaoTse)

This philosophy of sustainability also applies to the foundation of the hospital, for whose lasting benefit and effectiveness we provide.

Why Goma in the Congo?

In 2015, the "Church in Action" in Frankfurt put together a team of young Christians to develop the Zanner Institute, a German secondary school in Goma, Congo. The grandfather of the pastor of this congregation, Dr. Richard Zanner from Bad Homburg, had built it in 1992 as Mission Director of the World Church Day.

My son Andreas Lemperle is an architect and member of this church and persuaded the team to take me along as a plastic surgeon with experience in Africa www.interplast-germany.de after the local pastor of the "Church of the Nazarene" Jaques Balibanga had found a blood bank with a small operating theater and a few beds, the CEDIGO Centre Medical, where my small team was able to operate very effectively on over 100 patients with mainly facial tumors.

From 2015 to 2019, 5 lNTERPLAST teams at CEDIGO in Goma operated on over 1,200 patients together with the local surgeons and recognized the absolute necessity for the construction of a small hospital on the grounds of the local Church of the Nazarene.

After 24 years of experience with our Nepal hospital www.nepalhospital.de, the most important prerequisite for a hospital in foreign countries is the trustworthiness, reliability and selfless commitment of the local doctors - especially in the corruption-ridden Congo. For 6 years, the 4 doctors there have been treating the poor patients, who have nowhere else to go, out of their Christian faith, i.e. in the Congo for God's wages.

Goma, a city of 2 million people on the eastern border with Rwanda, is the headquarters of the UN Refugee Agency and its UN blue helmets in Africa. Under Belgian rule, Goma was the Las Vegas of Africa due to its pleasant climate on the shores of the great Lake Kivu.

On the other hand, the Congo has been constantly involved in civil wars since its separation from Belgium in 1960 and large parts of the north-east are still ruled by rebels. In 2003, 2/3 of the city was flooded by a glowing lava flow when the nearby Nyiragongo volcano erupted.

There are practically only four functioning hospitals in Goma, which only carry out emergencies, but not the usual treatments or operations for the poor population without prior payment. When I visited the then newly built Center Medical in 2016 and asked what a moaning woman on earth was missing, I received the answer "an angina". This can often be alleviated overnight with an infusion of the right antibiotics and cured in a few days. I immediately brought the doctors lots of infusions and antibiotics from our large suitcases - and asked the next day how the woman was: "she died during the night"; and what about the antibiotics? "she would have died, so we kept them for other patients" ... this woman came from a different clan and had no advocates.

This was the starting signal for a hospital for the poor on the Nazarene property. Many friends, family and also the Church-in-Action in Frankfurt, which initially financed a wall around the site, participated in the search for monthly support of $2,000. An inheritance from our mother's house (shared with my 7 sisters) then made it possible to break ground in November 2020.

My architect son Andreas and I had designed a ground-floor surgical outpatient clinic with architect Henry Kawaya, which could later be extended with three more floors if funding was available. The planned REHEMA-Centre Hospitalier (REHEMA is Swahili for compassion) received planning permission and the blessing of the Ministry of Health in July 2020.

My various applications via INTERPLAST-Germany, e.V. to the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) in Bonn and the Else-Kröner-Fresenius-Stiftung (EKFS) in Bad Homburg were unfortunately rejected due to "lack of sustainability". However, INTERPLAST generously stepped in so that the exterior construction could be completed in April 2022.

I selected the interior furnishings (beds, office and kitchen) from IKEA in Frankfurt, Germany; they arrived in Goma in November 2022 in a first container via Hamburg and Dar es Salaam. I ordered the medical anesthesia equipment and surgical operating equipment from YsenMed in GuangZou in China for a fifth of the price in Europe or Goma.

After a successful INTERPLAST mission under Dr. Christoph Sachs from Berlin and Prof. from Lübeck in November 2022, the hospital was officially inaugurated on 18.3.2022 by the military governor Constant Ndima Kongbader Province Kivu-North and many guests. 4 doctors, 2 administrative staff, 6 nurses, 1 laboratory technician and 1 pharmacist, as well as 2 cleaners and 2 security staff took up their duties and have since been treating patients with surgical problems, pregnancies and internal medicine issues. Difficult cases are presented at the "Heal Africa Hospital" 5 km away or transferred there.

The current Medical Director Dr. Ephraim Zibona is currently training as a gynecologist at Heal Africa Hospital, as is the future internist Dr. Jean Bakuka and future pediatrician Dr. Olivier.