First of all, I would like to introduce the Kimbondo pediatric hospital in Congo DR. It’s already 6 years ago, since I dropped there for the first time. I was immediately subjugated by padre Hugo, priest and physician from Chili, who came down to join Dr Laura Perna, former professor of pediatric pneumology at Sienna University some 15 years ago. Kimbondo started as a malnutrition clinic and developed to a full staffed pediatric hospital, divided in pavilions devoted to specific illnesses (cardiology, TBC, nephrology, infectious diseases, neurology, etc). Moreover, besides the 300 inpatients, there are about 250 orphans housed on the Ngafula Hill, where the hospital was built.

Missions at Kimbondo are particularly hectic: time doesn’t seem to stop here! When you’ve done 20 consultations in the morning, clinic rounds in the afternoon, and you feel you would kind of relax in the “payotte” to watch the spectacular sunset over the hills that draw you to infinity, because all you see in front of you is mere nature and nothing that remains you of human involvement, someone will call you because a child is loosing all his blood through the stools, another has got convulsions, a third one has a high fever due to malaria and is not doing well, and you to climb up the hill once again. Don’t forget, we are physicians without holiday!

There is even more than mere medical activities: the padre asks me also to check every ward, to solve some staff problems, face some maintenance emergencies, discuss the reliability of some lab tests, set up a list of the most needed drugs, which have to be in the pharmacy, and so on. Wile I’m rushing from one place to the other, my nurse France is doing an excellent job, by putting  my guide lines for the organization of the intensive care unit into practice. And my sister in law Yvette came for the second time this January to improve the installation of the physical therapy unit (in pavilion Patrick) where a second physical therapist Teresa has been joined to former Jérémy, as a result of her excellent job.
So this gives a very incomplete impression about a mission at Kimbondo, but I’ll be back with some more blogging soon.

Patrick Peeters, pediatrician, chairman ad interim