The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the largest country in sub-Saharan Africa, is endowed with exceptional natural resources, including minerals such as cobalt and copper, hydropower potential, significant arable land, immense biodiversity, and the world’s second-largest rainforest, notes The World Bank.
However, “Most people in the DRC have not benefited from this wealth,” The World Bank stated in October 2024. “A long history of conflict, political upheaval and instability, and authoritarian rule have led to a grave to a grave, ongoing humanitarian crisis.”
In stark terms, the “DRC is among the five poorest nations in the world” where an estimated 75 percent of Congolese people lived on less than $2.15 a day in 2024, and about one out of six people living in extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa lives in the DRC, according to The World Bank.
In addition, the DRC has one of the highest stunting rates (42 percent of children under age 5), and malnutrition is the underlying cause of almost half of the deaths of children under the age of five, The World Bank reported.
“The DRC is home to a diverse array of indigenous peoples (IPs) who have faced a range of challenges, including forced displacement from their ancestral lands, discrimination, and lack of access to basic services such as healthcareand education,” states The World Bank. “DRC’s health care systems have been greatly impacted by its own protracted conflict, as well as by the continued longstanding complex humanitarian crises in the world.”
The world’s largest medical library, the National Library of Medicine (NLM), also commented that the prolonged conflict in the DRC has “placed immense pressure on the already fragile healthcare system in the DRC.
“Medical facilities, such as hospitals and clinics are often targets of violence, leading to the destruction of medical facilities and hindering the delivery of essential healthcare services. The DRC healthcare system is further compromised by inadequate logistic resources, shortage of diagnostic facilities, a dearth of personal protective equipment, and divergent stakeholder interests.”
The DRC is ranked third highest in the estimated number of global maternal deaths according to the NLM, which adds, “Inadequate maternal and child health service provisions, including antenatal care, postnatal care, presence of competent carers during childbirth, and regular check‐ups for children account for this.”
For these reasons and more, Bread and Water for Africa® this year is embarking on a new healthcare initiative in the DRC in collaboration with our in-country partner, Technologies Appropriées pour le Congo (TAC Asbl), to establish a mobile clinic, similar to what we are already supporting in Malawi.
In his grant proposal, TAC Asbl program manager Lucien Beele said that funding from Bread and Water for Africa® would go a long way in “strengthening our capacity to provide sustainable and equitable healthcare to the most at-risk populations.
“By funding the establishment of mobile clinics, we will expand our coverage area and increase our accessibility to isolated families, namely the Pygmies who are now the most marginalized and deprived in society.”
Smithsonian Magazine notes that for thousands of years Pygmies have lived in harmony with equatorial Africa’s magnificent jungles in Equatorial Africa, stretching from Cameroon’s Atlantic coast eastward to Lake Victoria in Uganda.
In a December 2008 article, Smithsonian Magazine reported that with about 250,000 of them remaining, “Pygmies are the largest group of hunter-gatherers left on earth.
“But they are under serious threat.”
Sixteen years later, their situation has not improved, which is why Lucien advocating for them, a people most Americans do not even know still exist.
The Bikoro, Iboko, and Ntondo health zone, in the sparsely populated, poor, largely rural community in the DRC’s Equateur province, is made up of isolated and remote villages, he explained.
“These groups include the region’s poorest indigenous peoples: the Pygmies.
“These pygmy groups, who often live on the fringes of society, have an even larger problem accessing health division.
“This results in an extreme degree of vulnerability due to their inability to cover medical care, in terms of both unstable financial situations and the logistics needed to obtain medical care.”
The Pygmy communities are located in these isolated regions where traveling is difficult and “challenging access to medical care are the roads, which during the rainy period become impassable.
“Moreover, the lack of medicines worsens the health situation in the area, especially for Pygmies who do not have the means to go to the few existing health centers,” says Lucien.
In sum, “The main objective of our project is to ensure access to basic medical care for rural populations, including Pygmy communities, who are the most marginalized and live in conditions of great precariousness, without access to essential health services.”
Specifically, the mobile clinic project would go a long way towards addressing these pressing challenges by providing basic health care and promoting proper hygiene practices by selecting mobile clinic sites designed to serve those in the most isolated and hard-to-reach areas, provide access to essential medicines to treat common illnesses as well as recruiting and training local medical staff including nurses and community health workers to ensure continuous quality service.
Initially, Lucien expects that through the mobile clinic service 50 to 70 individuals will be treated each day from a population 4,500 from 15 villages.
“In this way, we hope to contribute to a significant reduction in morbidity and mortality from certain preventable diseases, particularly among the Pygmy communities, who are undoubtedly the most vulnerable and often less well off than other population groups.”
