First outreach in the newly built 4th INTERPLAST hospital in Goma, Congo

After two years of construction, the first floor of the 4th INTERPLAST hospital "REHEMA (Mercy) Centre Hospitalier" in Gama, Congo on the border with Rwanda was ready to allow two lnterplast teams to inaugurate the operating rooms in November 2022.
The 1st team with Dr. Christoph Sachs, who had already operated 3 times with me in Gama, and his anesthesiologist Dr. Philipp Kloss had to wait for the container from China in the first week of 11/14 to 11/24/23 - with all the medical equipment such as anesthesia apparatus, operating equipment, as well as X-ray and ultrasound, which was held for 4 weeks by a customs officer in the port of Dar-es-Salaam.
For similar reasons, the 2nd container with IKEA kitchens and office furniture purchased in Germany arrived 4 weeks too late in Goma, so that both were initially busy unpacking and connecting the appliances. My son-in-law's father flew to Goma 3 weeks before to assemble the furniture and had to leave the day the containers arrived.
Christoph Sachs and Philipp Kloss were able to operate on the most difficult patients in the 2nd week and accomplish tremendous things.
The 2nd team under Prof. Peter Sieg with anesthesiologist Jens Hennike and his wife (Fig. 5) joined on 20.11.22, but first had to unpack boxes and make connections. Then, however, the team and the local anesthesiologists and young guests came together for difficult operations and left an excellent impression in Goma. In total, 104 patients were operated on by the two teams during the 3 weeks.
One more thing about the future of the hospital: the future gynecologist Dr. David Kapagama will start initially on the first floor after his specialist examination in Egypt in the spring of 2023, and, if everything goes so happily, a pediatrician and infectiologist, and if necessary a traumatologist and other specialists will join as consultants in 2024.
The newly founded Faculty of Medicine of the University of Goma (UNIGom) has already expressed its interest as a teaching hospital and the Minister of Health has already signaled his agreement that the hospital will go to the state if it is not self-sustaining after 5 years of our financial support. The state will pay the salaries of the employees from the official opening on March 18, 2023.
The staff, consisting of 5 doctors, 6 nurses and 5 others, is very proud of their new workplace. The REHEMA Hospital also seems to be known throughout Goma, so that the 33 beds will be fully occupied at the official inauguration by the Superintendent of the Nazarene Church for Africa on March 18, 2023.
A second practical inauguration of the hospital took place in the new year, 8.1.2023, when the young doctor Salomon had to deliver a mother of a child by Caesarean section. The parents gave their newborn the 3rd name Gottfried. But it was a girl and I could still quickly obtain that it was baptized on the name Frieda, as already two girls before her.

Gottfried Lemperle for the first two Interplast teams in the newly built Interplast Hospital