Working on the Congolese front line

doi:10.1136/bmj.b63

Published 14 January 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b63
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b63

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Working on the Congolese front line

Brigitte Breuillac

¹ Médecins Sans Frontières

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

For Paul Kanulambi Walelu, dealing with gunshot wounds, openfractures, emergency caesarean sections, peritonitis, and typhoidperforations is all in a day’s work. Or, quite often,all in a night’s work. For as well as working seven daysa week, Mr Walelu, an anaesthetic nurse, works every other night,for the medical aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontièresat the busy Rutshuru Hospital in North Kivu, the war-torn provinceon the eastern border of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

It is Mr Walelu who in October last year helped the Britishsurgeon David Nott in a forequarter amputation on a 16 yearold boy who was close to death (BMJ 2008;337:a2958, 10 Dec,doi:10.1136/bmj.a2958). The boy had previously had an operationto remove the upper part of his arm, but his stump was septicand gangrenous when Dr Nott arrived for a month’s voluntaryservice at the hospital. . . . [Full text of this article]

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