The many reasons Why to support HEAL Africa

• Congolese led
• Globally connected
• Community focused
• Significant Impact
• Help us build a new hospital

Globally connected: HEAL Africa is connected to some of the major medical and educational centers in the world as volunteer doctors and nurses, media specialists, come to teach the Congolese in Goma. The man who discovered the first pediatric case of HIV in the US, the link to maternal-child transmission, and the link with the blood banks in transmission of HIV, Dr. Arthur Ammann, has selected HEAL Africa as a partner for his organization, Global Strategies for HIV Prevention, to work in Africa. Pediatricians from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Harvard started IPOP, another partner of HEAL Africa—and have sent teams to teach for the past six years, to improve the quality of care for children of Goma and North Kivu. Doctors, pastors, lawyers and teachers from the US, UK, Australia and Europe have come to teach. This training keeps Congolese connected with new ideas, practices and procedures.

Community Focused: All of HEAL Africa’s programs go out of the hospital grounds to community leaders, whether it’s training widows to farm more efficiently or identifying children with disability who need surgical care, or foster families of HIV orphans who need help in order to provide care for their own families and those they’ve brought in. Keeping children fed, healthy and in school is a universal care of parents. HEAL Africa knows that it takes a village to raise a child. HEAL Africa staff is trying to keep the children in the village where they have family roots and heritage, and have a chance to go to school and learn the things that will give them a future!

Donations work harder: HEAL Africa has a very small office in the US supporting the programs in Goma, DR Congo. True change only happens when people recognize the choices they have, and decide to do something differently. HEAL Africa is bringing information and encouragement to the people who have lived with conflict for at least twelve years. We know it will take time, and patience, and love. But investing in people who are Congolese and committed to a different future of Congo is a wise choice.

Your support builds strength and capacity of Congolese:

• healthcare professionals
• social activists
• leadership for Congo’s future

According to good development principles, outside assistance builds on what is already in place and functioning well, developing proven capacity and giving local actors the additional tools they need to do a better job. HEAL Africa has pioneered fistula repair in North Kivu and Maniema provinces since 2002, when no one else was interested in caring for women with fistula.

• Our experienced and specialized surgeons have performed over 1600 fistula surgeries.
• We have trained six specialists to perform this surgery with skill and success.
• We conduct decentralized outreach surgery in North Kivu and Maniema provinces in local general hospitals, linked at the same time with in-service training of local staff, referring only the most complicated cases to Goma.
• USAID, IRC, UNICEF and Engenderhealth, have all invested in HEAL Africa staff, equipment and infrastructure.
• We are situated within the government medical system by the Medical Inspection of North Kivu as the tertiary referral hospital of the province.
• We are a recognized clinical training centre of the Medical Faculty of the University of Goma, offering the first two years of accredited clinical specialization in Pediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Family Medicine, Surgery and Orthopedics.

HEAL Africa is a Congolese not-for-profit association which has completely rebuilt itself after total destruction by the volcano, with assistance from many friends in the USA and around the world. We have a state of the art surgical suite, but seriously lack the hospital building that will allow us to increase our capacity to serve patients and train medical professionals efficiently.

The second floor of the proposed hospital will be entirely devoted to women’s fistula services; and the whole hospital is devoted to teaching and preparing Congolese doctors to give excellent service in the most underserved areas of Congo.Many visitors from around the world have visited HEAL Africa and come away enchanted by a hospital of excellence run entirely by Congolese staff of the highest caliber. A new physical plant will enable HEAL Africa to serve their patients even better than before, and train the next generation of doctors in an environment where it is possible to practice excellent medicine.

Locally led: Dr. Jo Lusi, Lyn Lusi, and a dedicated and competent team of doctors, professionals in many areas of program development and administration have one thing in common: passionate commitment to community health and the future of Congo. They are Congolese, they know the languages, the cultures and appreciate the variety of issues that affect the health of the people they’re seeing on a daily basis. They know that the issues are rooted deeply at community level.