HEAL Africa's Goma hospital is a large and modern, with a growing range of good facilities. There are clean, modern wards, well-equipped treatment rooms and operating theatres, X-ray and other sophisticated equipment, and well-trained and caring staff.
All this is the result of donations from supporters around the world.
Sadly, most people in DR Congo don’t have access to good medical care. There are numerous clinics and small hospitals, many of which were started by missionaries decades ago. But since the missionaries left, many back in the 1960’s, they have had no funds, no new equipment and facilities.
Sometimes, nurses trained by the missionaries are the only ones trying to help, using long out-of-date skills.
HEAL Africa’s teams travel many miles, in Goma, around North Kivu and into neighbouring provinces, trying to help clinics and hospitals like these. The travel alone is expensive, difficult, and very dangerous.
At each clinic, HEAL Africa will assess the facilities, equipment and staff, and develop a programme of help – cleaning, renewing, re-training and so-on. Medical staff will perform urgently needed operations for the local community, and establish care regimes for the patients. Each time a team returns they will seek to build progressively on earlier visits.
Where possible, nursing staff are given renewed or additional training in Goma, to help to restore and improve their effectiveness.
This is a ministry of huge proportions, and truly life-saving importance to countless thousands of people.
The current need is for funding for training seminars for nurses from the Goma area. Around 60 will attend each session. Seminars will take place in the evenings, when they can be spared from nursing duties. It is a sacrifice for them to give this additional time. Because of the violence in the city at night, each has to be given the fare for a motorbike taxi to take them safely home.
We urgently need to raise £3900 to continue these seminars for a further year – that's just £75 per week.
