The new hospital

The initiator and coordinator of the project, Dr. Gottfried Lemperle and his son Andreas Lemperle (architect), designed a single-storey surgical outpatient clinic together with other architects and doctors on site. This was supplemented by a further storey after completion and commissioning. The planned Center Hospitalier REHEMA (Rehema for mercy in Swahili) received planning permission from the building authority and the Ministry of Health in July 2020. The hospital will initially have a capacity of 16 beds and will have an operating theater, sterile room, 24-hour outpatient clinic with 3-4 doctors and various monitoring rooms.
In the meantime, the first floor with the departments of gynecology, obstetrics, pediatrics and, above all, neonatology (unique in Goma!) was inaugurated in July 2024.

Text 19: Should the need and corresponding funding opportunities arise in the future to set up an internal and an orthopaedic department, two more floors can be added to the existing two.

Goma on Lake Kivu on the border with Rwanda. In the background, the ever-bubbling Nyiragongo volcano, which last erupted on 22.5.2021.

Due to its good climate on Lake Kivu at an altitude of 1500 m, Goma was the Las Vegas of Africa under Belgian rule until 1960 and 1965. In the background are the forests of Rwanda, a rich country that was flooded with aid money after the horrific genocide in 1994!

In 2015, the “Church-in-Action” in Frankfurt put together a team of young Christians to expand the Zanner Institute, a German secondary school in Goma, Congo. The grandfather of the pastor of this congregation, Dr. Richard Zanner from Bad Homburg, had built it in 1992 as Mission Director of the World Church Day.

My son Andreas Lemperle is an architect and member of this church and persuaded the team to take me along as a plastic surgeon with experience in Africa www.interplast-germany.de after the local pastor of the “Church of the Nazarene” Jaques Balibanga had found a blood bank with a small operating theater and a few beds, the CEDIGO Centre Medical, where my small team was able to operate very effectively on over 100 patients with mainly facial tumors.

From 2015 to 2019, 5 lNTERPLAST teams at CEDIGO in Goma operated on over 1,200 patients together with the local surgeons and recognized the absolute necessity for the construction of a small hospital on the grounds of the local Church of the Nazarene.

After 24 years of experience with our Nepal hospital www.nepalhospital.de, the most important prerequisite for a hospital in foreign countries is the trustworthiness, reliability and selfless commitment of the local doctors - especially in the corruption-ridden Congo. For 6 years, the 4 doctors there have been treating the poor patients, who have nowhere else to go, out of their Christian faith, i.e. in the Congo for God's wages.

Goma, a city of 2 million people on the eastern border with Rwanda, is the headquarters of the UN Refugee Agency and its UN blue helmets in Africa. Under Belgian rule, Goma was the Las Vegas of Africa due to its pleasant climate on the shores of the great Lake Kivu.

On the other hand, Congo has been constantly embroiled in civil wars since its separation from Belgium in 1960 and large parts of the north-east are still under rebel control. Over 1 million refugees from the rebel areas are currently eking out their lives without any future in UN tent cities around Goma. In 2003, 2/3 of the city was flooded by a glowing lava flow when the nearby Nyiragongo volcano erupted.

There are practically only four functioning hospitals in Goma, which only carry out emergencies, but not the usual treatments or operations for the poor population without prior payment. When I visited the then newly built Nazareen Medical Center in 2016 and asked what a moaning woman on earth was missing, I received the answer “an angina”. This can often be alleviated overnight with an infusion of the right antibiotics and cured in a few days. I immediately brought the doctors lots of infusions and antibiotics from our large suitcases - and asked the next day how the woman was: “she died during the night”; and what about the antibiotics? “she would have died, so we kept the antibiotics for other patients” ... this woman came from a different clan and had no advocates.

This terrible experience for us was the starting signal for a hospital for the poor on the Nazarene's property. Many friends, family and also the Church-in-Action in Frankfurt participated in the initial search for a monthly support of $2,000, which initially financed a wall around the area. An inheritance from our mother's house (shared with my 7 sisters) then made it possible to break ground in November 2020.

My architect son Andreas and I had designed a ground-floor surgical outpatient clinic with architect Henry Kawaya, which could later be extended with three more floors if funding was available. The planned REHEMA-Centre Hospitalier (REHEMA is Swahili for compassion) received planning permission and the blessing of the Ministry of Health in July 2020.

My various applications via INTERPLAST-Germany, e.V. to the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) in Bonn and the Else-Kröner-Fresenius-Stiftung (EKFS) in Bad Homburg were unfortunately rejected due to “lack of sustainability”. However, INTERPLAST generously stepped in so that the exterior construction could be completed in April 2022.

I selected the interior furnishings (beds, office and kitchen) from IKEA in Frankfurt; they arrived in Goma in November 2022 in a first container via Hamburg and Dar es Salaam. I ordered the medical anesthesia equipment and surgical operating equipment from YsenMed in GuangZou in China for a fifth of the price in Europe or Goma.

After a successful INTERPLAST mission under Dr. Christoph Sachs from Berlin and Prof. from Lübeck in November 2022, the hospital was officially inaugurated on 18.3.2022 by military governor Constant Ndima Kongbader and many guests. 4 doctors, 2 administrative staff, 6 nurses, 1 laboratory technician and 1 pharmacist, as well as 2 cleaners and 2 security staff took up their duties and have been treating patients with surgical problems, pregnancies and internal medicine issues ever since. Difficult cases are presented at the “Heal Africa Hospital” 5 km away or transferred there.

Former Medical Director Dr. Ephraim Zibona is currently training as a gynaecologist at Heal Africa Hospital, as is future internist Dr. Jean Bakuka and future paediatrician Dr. Olivier.

Goma is located on a plateau in the middle of Africa, far away from the sea with its iodine content. That is why there are a large number of goiters there. After our Interplast team's flight home, we were able to persuade Dr. Kimona, who was always actively involved in the operations, to operate on a further 10 to 20 patients with extensive “strums” and keloids for a fee. As the latter patients come to us for cosmetic reasons, they are charged a small fee for the use of the surgery.

Because no Interplast team will be able to reach the safety of Goma in 2024 due to the rebels 70 km away, the hospital will organize a camp for Dr. Kimona where he will only operate on poor patients with goiters.

Black skin tends to develop excessive scars and scar tumors (keloids). In young women, they occur particularly frequently after piercing the ears with impure needles or broken glass.
In this patient, the keloid has grown extremely over 6 years, but has not returned after the sterile operation. These common keloids are also surgically removed by local doctors

Text 45: Today, even with many children, the old parents can no longer expect to be fed by them, because they have to leave the family after school and from then on are on their own! The sudden contact with modern times has destroyed these millennia-old structures of families, villages and clans and forces everyone to look for work today. Saving is not in their heritage, i.e. the fact that children will cost school and education fees and a dowry does not occur to them.
Only those who have connections find work at a young age, i.e. 90% of Congolese “make ends meet”. - On the other hand, we can only envy them for their unbroken cheerfulness.

Text 46: Africa already has more inhabitants than China and India and will have as many inhabitants at the turn of the century as half the world's population today.
Why doesn't Europe finally wake up and change the causes of migration, i.e. create jobs in Africa in the countryside and livestock farming or large sewing factories like in Bangladesh?
The clever Chinese have long since recognized the value of Africa and its mineral resources, while Europe slept for 20 years. They know where gold and rare earths are hidden – and “give” the African governments ports, railways and trains, and highways that end 10 km before the expected precious metals and later diamond fields.

If you fly over Africa today and suddenly see greenery, then the Chinese have set up a farm or tea plantation there; and if you see a lit street or a village at night, then the Chinese are producing electricity there in abundance!

Unfortunately, millions of Congolese are starving here too, even though Congo has the most fertile soil in Africa and its jungle is the third largest CO2 lung in the world. But its inhabitants are incapable of building up a productive agriculture because they have yet to learn true socialism, voluntary cooperation.
“The enemy of the African is another African” goes a modern song from Senegal. Twenty years ago, they were happy in the Congo with a banana in their hands; today they are unhappy with their smartphones in their hands. I see a huge migration of people from sub-Saharan Africa to the north. Hunger has always been the cause of most non-war-related migrations.
Unless Europe finally wakes up and reduces its imports from India, Bangladesh, Vietnam and China, but instead irrigates the Sahara and relocates its energy production, agriculture and technical production to our neighboring continent of Africa.
Despite the richest mineral resources in the world (!) and fertile soil throughout the Congo, children in the cities are starving because there is no “planned economy”.

The Congolese are interested and want to achieve something in their lives, but almost all of them lack the starting capital of $1000 for a small store or a trade - or $5000 to study to become a nurse or laboratory technician.
Targeted donations to individuals bring income and education to young people in the most corrupt of all countries.

50% of the 90 million Congolese are under 15 years old, without any prospect of work. Where should they go but to flee north to Europe? As long as the big European companies don't drill wells for groundwater under the Sahara and build factories or start farming there, no trend reversal is to be expected.

Women have children at an early age and are separated from their ...

Macho men leave her to spend a lifetime working for their children.