Scientific Reports

In last year's 2021 issue, I reported on pages 79-80 about the launch of a 4th Interplast hospital, which is to be called the REHEMA Center Medical (Rehema means mercy in Swahili). After 2 rejections of financial support from the Ministry for Development (BMZ) due to an alleged lack of sustainability, and from the Else Kröner Fresenius Foundation because the Democratic Republic of Congo is not participating in the project, my mother's inheritance came to my aid in order to start the construction of the hospital, which is located in the center of the city, unbureaucratically at the end of 2020.

My architect son Andreas designed an initially one-storey, later possibly four-storey hospital with a floor area of 600 square meters, and my entrepreneur son Martin financed the demolition of the previous outpatient clinic, the bishop's residence and the Church of the Nazarene, which looked more like Uncle Tom's hut, as well as the excavation of the lava for the foundation walls.

Since then, the walls have been raised, space has been left for large windows to save electricity, and a stable roof has been put on, which will later serve as the floor of the first floor.

In March 2022, the electricity, plumbing, interior plaster and floor slabs will be laid so that the interior work can begin with kitchen boards in the operating theater and all functional rooms, with beds, cabinets and operating inventory. The opening is expected to take place in summer 2022, with an effective advertising campaign to draw the attention of the poor and rich residents of Goma to their new REHEMA hospital.
In Goma - as in the whole of the Congo - there is a lack of specialist medical departments because the assistant doctors have to pay up to $15,000 to the few universities for their 5-year training as specialists. REHEMA is therefore to become a specialist hospital in which, for example, prospective plastic surgery, facial surgery and orthopaedic patients will be listed and then operated on by the corresponding Interplast team.
In addition, training for midwives and general practitioners, for example, is to take place, and more dentists, pediatricians and infectiologists are to be flown in.

All of this will cost more money, so after the hospital's first operation, I will submit a second application to the Fresenius Foundation and the BMZ for further expansion and training costs. At the moment, there is still a shortfall of around 50,000 euros in funding for the X-ray and ultrasound equipment. With this equipment, the doctors will generate their own income for REHEMA from paying patients in the surrounding area.

While the costs for the expansion of the first floor into an outpatient clinic stand at around 350,000 euros, I was able to raise almost 100,000 euros from 35 friends for the future upkeep of the hospital at $5,000/month with my begging letters to 170 rich friends and acquaintances. In addition, “my Chinese” in Shanghai, who sells my folding remedy in China with great success, will contribute $2,500 per month for an indefinite period of time for the operation.
A stroke of luck brought us an American hospital manager who already runs a Nazarene hospital in Gisenyi, on the other side of the border to Rwanda. For a fee, he will also manage REHEMA until it is profitable.
The 4 doctors have understood that their continued existence will depend on the REHEMA hospital becoming independent in the near future - and that they will have to treat their patients better than the doctors in the 3 larger hospitals and the university. Initially, they will manage on $400/month and, depending on the economic situation, will be able to increase this to $600. However, the priority remains to treat the poor free of charge.

The two doctors from the former Nazarene outpatient clinic took advantage of 2021 to complete further training in laboratory medicine and ultrasound and X-ray in neighboring hospitals. A new gynaecologist will join us in 2022 after his specialist training in Cairo, and Dr. Kimona, who has been assisting our Interplast team since 2015 - and who also operated on 30 goiters and some acute large carcinomas after our departure in 2018 - will become head of surgery at REHEMA. In 2017, the Rotary Club of Nuremberg financed a 3-month internship with Prof. Raymund Horch in Erlangen, where he learned the basics of plastic surgery.
Without the knowledge of the great motivation of the doctors there, who have been working for God's wages up to now, and the different mentality of the Congolese (my brother-in-law Hein Stahl would beat his hands over his head), who do not know many of our values, I would never have started this project. We were all born “on the sunny side of the street” and were allowed to spend our whole lives on it: What better and more meaningful legacy can you leave to those who have not escaped the shady side of the street all their lives than a functioning hospital that at least relieves them of their medical worries.