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BWH physicians are part of a Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) effort to research and bring improved medical care and awareness to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DCR), a nation battling widespread sexual violence against women for the last decade.
In April, Dr. Denis Mukwege, director of Panzi Hospital in the DCR, came to BWH to raise awareness of this epidemic of violent rape and thank the HHI care providers and researchers for being among the first to document what’s happening in his country. “You have shown great courage to come to Panzi and given hope to women who are crying out for help,” he said through a translator during an April lecture in Bornstein Amphitheater.
“This is a complex problem that requires public health, legal and economic analyses to understand before we can begin mapping out strategies for change,” said Michael VanRooyen, MD, MPH, an attending physician in Emergency Medicine.
The DCR became gripped by sexual violence more than a decade ago when the genocide in Rwanda spilled into Congo, a region rich with gold, copper and diamond mines. The violence towards women may have gotten its start from militias in Rwanda, but in the DCR, violence and destruction of women now embeds the community and life in general, said Mukwege.
“We have many questions without answers,” he said.
Researchers need to gain an understanding of many aspects of this epidemic, including why the perpetrators are empowered to commit these sex crimes with impunity, VanRooyen said. He traveled to the DCR in May to study perpetrators and the sweeping cultural desensitization of violence towards women.
VanRooyen’s trip marks the third phase of HHI’s research and humanitarian project to help the people of the DCR and Panzi Hospital, a 350-bed, full-service hospital. It is the only hospital that serves a region with one million people. On any given day, it is 70 percent filled with sexual assault victims.
VanRooyen said HHI researchers are obliged to continue their research. “The UN and the international NGOs (non-governmental organizations) do not have the data to understand the dynamics of this epidemic,” he said. “We have a mandate to tell people throughout the world.”