The professional approach of the state employed doctors and nurses in Democratic Republic of Congo is not exactly what we consider to be a standard attitude of healthcare personnel. You can see arrogance and acting in a superior manner everywhere in the world, including Slovakia. And yet, what I have encountered in Congo is something that has pushed the line much further. To a dimension, I can hardly understand...

Kinshasa, the capital of Congo, was holding in the past in Africa the first place in offering the best quality health services. Long journeys undertaken by as far as the South Africans in order to get the treatment in the capital of Congo have been successively reduced only into constantly repeated stories in the city's hospitals. People often think back on the former glory and good old times. Majority of the health centers is nowadays neglected, ruined and dirty. Beds, instruments or basic medicaments are often missing; somewhere there is even no electricity or water. A clean hospital supplied with medicaments will a common Congolese call “service for the white people”, which means in translation “not affordable”

Somewhere within the development of the Congolese society and changing demands to life, the approach of the health care personnel has changed, from my point of view, to ethically not acceptable. In the health care facilities in Congo it is common lo let a person die on the hospital bed without help. He is coming to the hospital for relieve that is not provided to him. This manner has become so ordinary that nobody is objecting against it anymore. Why is it so? The answer is very easy. The patient has not paid for the treatment and hence he has no right to it. In times, where we hear everywhere talks about reaching the millennium development goals, in the developing countries immense number of people is daily dying on curable diseases. Doctors and nurses are standing just beside, with their hands in the pockets, shrugging their shoulders. People in Congo live up to the proverb: “Everybody for himself, God for everyone.”

Let me give you a concrete example from the field. A nurse in a state-owned hospital in Kinshasa has a salary of around 40 USD and it’s hardly covering her rent. Despite that, this is the amount she is working for. Even this minimum, not to speak about its increase, represents for the state an item often too high and it’s “forgotten” so the health care personnel is left without their small wage. Therefore at least once a year they organize several months’ long strikes. So far I have no objections and I consider it as a way of showing their position of a necessary change and pressure on the government to take responsibility for its duties. After all, a strike is a legitimate form of showing one's discontent used worldwide. However, the problem in Congo is not the strike. The tragedy in the country is a fact, that majority of the health care personnel, who has the duty even in these circumstances to provide minimum health care, is confusing the strike with the right not to provide any medical services at all. In reality it is happening that hospitals and health centers are almost emptied. You will not find nurses, doctors, or patients.

You are out of luck, if you are ill during a strike. The reply is: “Wait!”. A pregnant woman coming in this period for an antenatal consultation has no luck either. During the strike she won’t get any advice or possibility to get tested for HIV. Majority of the population does not know until now their serological status. HIV testing is not included in the minimum service package and so she and her child, in case she is HIV positive, are taken away the chance to prevent the transmission of HIV virus from mother to child.

It is far too serious decision about the future of a newborn. And a nurse, shaking her head, is still repeating that it is simply not possible to perform a test during the strike. In exactly this moment I stop understand them.

The situation in the country is difficult and almost nobody, except those who can get by in a corrupted environment, is quite well. Many people are suffering. There is money missing for housing, drinking water, essential food, electricity, school, clothes...Health care is a category of costs, for which many Congolese simply do not have the means. Therefore one of the goals of Magna’s project is to participate in rendering good quality health care and its accessibility to as many people as possible.

Andrea Stránska, Project coordinator Magna Children at Risk Congo.