For doctor in Congo's overlooked conflict, 'crisis fatigue' isn't an option
Dr. Elvis Badianga Kumbu can tell a lot about what’s happening in this part of Congo by the stories women tell him.
In normal times, as he presses his stethoscope gently against the chests of their wispy babies, the women speak of the personal tragedies that landed them here, in the malnutrition ward of a scruffy public hospital. They tell of husbands who died in car accidents, or divorced them, or simply went away to work in the local diamond mines and never came back. They explain how the money dwindled to nothing. How they cut back from two meals a day, to one. How finally, they – and their babies – ate nothing at all.
“There is always a story,” the doctor says, folding his stethoscope around his neck after rounds. “But now they are more terrible than before.”
These days, they often begin with
'Congo fatigue'Being present
