Tuesday morning, 10 o'clock. Mama Nsuyani, 17 years of age and 38 weeks pregnant, registers in the emergency room of the St. Joseph's hospital. Saturday she was referred to this place by a health-care centre in the countryside. She has come with her 1 year-old daughter and suffered from high blood pressure. After a three-day journey, she has finally arrived in Kinshasa.

Preeclampsia is a life-threatening disease for both the baby and the mother. The greatest risks are convulsions causing oxygen shortage with disastrous consequences. Not every Congolese woman has enough money to attend check-ups during pregnancy. This is the reason why preeclampsia is still a great problem in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

When Mama Nsuyani registered in the emergency room, she immediately received an infusion with antihypertensives and, as precaution, medication was laid out already to be able to treat convulsions. Thanks to MWV, our presence and the material sent it was possible to give this young woman at once the care that she needed.

Before MWV had assisted in the emergency room, the situation for the patients was as follows:

1. first you paid for the consultation when seeing the emergency physician.
2. then you had to go to a pharmacy to buy the infusion, medication, needles, bandages etc...
3. then you had to go back to the emergency room in order to administered all medication.

Due to this financial and practical threshold, some urgent treatments were not carried out. Several patients died while the family was looking for money to be able to pay for the medication and the first care.

To treat quickly and correctly is important in cases of emergency.
For us it was time to do en experiment. On duty, apart from a stethoscope and a sphygmomanometer, there was no medical material available. Together with the Congolese emergency physicians, we developed a "kit for first care". After use, the kit is refilled by the patient. The first cares are quickly administered and the kit is available again for the next patient. For the poorest people, MWV donated a stock of material.

Thanks to this new concept of first aid, Mama Nsuyani received a quick and efficient therapy. The Congolese 'not-so-much-urgency" cases had been transformed into a fully-fledged service for emergencies. The doctors are glad, we are glad and above all Mama Nsuyani is glad: after the first care in the emergency room, Mama Nsuyani went to the delivery room and gave birth to her healthy son named 'Barth'. He received his name after the man who had helped his mother so well: Dr. Bart Lesaffre, emergency physician and my MWV colleague.