Dikembe Mutombo (officialmutombo)’s passion in life is to help the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo. During the pandemic, his mission expanded. A WhereAreTheyNow story by brianburnsed:
The reasons are manifold. There’s a chance many Central Africans have been widely exposed to a coronavirus similar to COVID-19 in the past and developed a measure of immunity. The consistently hot weather may have tempered the virus’s impact; people there spend their lives largely outdoors—even parts of Mutombo’s hospital are open-air rooms.
Dr. Ogundiran, of the WHO, says those practical barriers have created a new form of hesitancy, not one commonly experienced in the U.S. While misinformation is an issue in Central Africa, it’s not nearly as prevalent as in America., not the privilege of doubting science amid mass death, remains the primary barrier. The country has the third-largest population of impoverished people globally; as of 2018, an estimated three-quarters of Congo’s citizens lived on less than $1.
Luckily for the people of Masina, Mutombo didn’t relent. Today, locals have quick—and free—access to an emergency room, a range of surgical procedures, an intensive care unit and burgeoning treatments for HIV, AIDS, cancer and malaria. Just shy of 1 million patients have passed through the facility’s doors since it opened. Still, “we have a long way to go,” Mutombo says, citing high mortality rates in the country for children and expectant mothers.
The facility has also offered a slew of other services to those in need, like providing more than 10,000 complimentary hearing aids or performing volunteer cataract and cleft palate surgeries. Older patients who once dealt with debilitating arthritis can be seen shuffling with walkers through the hospital’s halls, open breezeways or a grassy courtyard as their artificial joints settle into place after free procedures.
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