Covenant News

UN Report Praises Karawa Hospital, Cites Need for Funding

CONGO (September 9, 2002) - A Covenant hospital in Karawa has received high marks from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in a recent report on hospitals and other humanitarian facilities in Congo, Covenant News Service has learned.

The UN study group reported on an inter-agency mission to four Congolese sites from July 15-19. Their report about the hospital in Karawa started by the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC) expressed gratefulness at the cooperation the hospital has had with non-government organizations as it attempts to help patients in the fight against the HIV/AIDS virus and other diseases.

Karawa's Covenant-supported hospital was given high marks as the agency compared Karawa's efforts with those at a general hospital in Gemena, noting the "omnipresent" support given by the Covenant church and other Protestant groups in the region. They also noted the hospital's system of rotating part-time personnel to meet the needs of patients and its effectiveness in obtaining needed drugs for medical care. "The hospital of Karawa is functional and knows a good rate of frequentation," the report states.

Given the needs of the hospital, however, it is clear from the UN report that additional financial support could do much to make the hospital even more effective. For example, the UN group noted that the Karawa hospital does not have running water, although it has electricity 24 hours per day. And, according to Jerome Nelson, director of church and society ministries for the ECC Central Conference, preventative care for AIDS and related viruses is non-existent because funding isn't available.

Nelson recently visited the Karawa hospital as part of a tour before attending a conference in Congo. He interviewed two Karawa doctors. One of them mentioned how the lack of finances - both for the hospital and the patients - makes it difficult to stop the spread of such diseases in the region.

"One doctor, Dr. Ngosse, the health zone director, mentioned that one problem (with helping those with HIV or related diseases) is (lack of) education," Nelson said. "People need to know what AIDS is all about, how it is actually transmitted. They might understand that they have it, but don't know how they might have contracted it or how it is transmitted. The other problem is that the people don't have a way to get tested (as a preventative measure). They couldn't just go in and get an AIDS test. The only way people know someone has AIDS is if they died or were very sick and came to the hospital."

To find out more about other UN humanitarian activities online, visit www.reliefweb.int. To learn more about what is happening in the Covenant Church of Congo (CEUM), watch for stories that are regularly posted in the news report at the ECC site at www.covchurch.org.

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