SPECIAL ABOUT DR DENIS MUKWEGE (Democatic Republic Congo)

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When one hurts or kills a women
one hurts or kills hummanity and is an antrocitie.
Gino d'Artali
and: My mother (1931-1997) always said to me <Mi figlio, non esistono notizie <vecchie> perche puoi imparare qualcosa da qualsiasi notizia.> Translated: <My son, there is no such thing as so called 'old' news because you can learn something from any news.>
Gianna d'Artali

Agence Francaise de Development
19 April 2022
<<Pioneering treatment for sexual violance in the Congo - and applying the lessons worldwide.
Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, has been treating victims of sexual violence under the direction of Nobel Peace Prize Winner Dr. Denis Mukwege since 1999. Some 55,000 people, mainly women and children, have sought care at the hospital after falling victim to rape and torture, invariably used as a weapon of war. The hospital has over two decades honed methods to facilitate psychological recovery. Now AFD is backing an initiative to validate the hospital's medical protocols, so they can be used to treat victims of sexual violence in other parts of the world. Aged between 2 and 80 years old, they come from across the north of the Congo, a region the size of Croatia. They have been subjected to rape, torture and humiliation. Many of them arrived on foot in Bukavu near the border with Rwanda, after walking for several days, carrying their physical and psychological wounds with them. Panzi Hospital, the only structure able to treat the women and children, has developed a holistic approach to providing care for bodies and minds, something Dr. Denis Mukwege and his colleagues have been doing for more than 20 years. Women receive two kinds of treatment here, physical care at the hospital and psychological care at the Panzi Foundation a few hundred meters away. The recovery process is guided by one idea: restore dignity and autonomy to these women and prepare their return to society. AFD Group has been supporting Panzi Hospital since 2021 by financing a project to improve its facilities. In 2022, AFD stepped up its involvement by signing a partnership agreement with psychoanalyst and philosophy professor Cynthia Fleury. She'll work with Dr. Mukwege to create a Chair in Philosophy at the hospital, which combines research and experimentation drawn from care protocols developed over decades by the pioneering Congolese doctor and gynaecological surgeon. <I saw that singing and dancing bring joy back to these women, but I can't explain why,> says Dr. Mukwege. <We've never developed a scientific method.> At the Panzi Foundation, women who arrived prostrate and mute eventually open up and (re) appropriate their bodies, often through artistic expression. Singing and dancing workshops can be cathartic. The objective of the Chair in Philosophy is to put a name to the mechanics at work, to establish protocols that could serve elsewhere. <We have the inventors of the resilience of tomorrow here,> says Cynthia Fleury. <These women are no longer simply survivors; they are 'vectors of knowledge.'> Prof. Fleury's objective is to <transform the care protocols and introduce social sciences, philosophy and arts in all the hospital structures.> As a paragon of this mix, Panzi Hospital is located in a region the philosopher defines as a <hub of vulnerability>, an area where a multitude of stress factors (economic, security, health and social) converge and reinforce one another. The hospital has been developing methods, which, if successful in this extreme setting, will likely be useful in other countries engulfed in violence and lawlessness. The encounter between the field practitioner and the sociologist marks the beginning of a collaboration whose innovative approaches, developed in the humidity of the Kivu region, will be exported for the benefit of science and medicine. It's part of a campaign waged by Dr. Mkwege: the Nobel Peace Prize laureate has called on states to create a global reparations fund to provide compensation to survivors and help them begin new lives.>>
Read more here:
https://www.afd.fr/en/actualites/pioneering-treatment-sexual-violence-congo-and-applying-lessons-worldwide
 

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