Word: kintaudi
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...Leon Ngoma Miezi Kintaudi, 56, is one physician who is bucking the trend. Born 150 miles from Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly known as Zaïre, he moved to the U.S. after finishing high school and worked his way through college and medical school in California. But while treating patients in a public-health clinic in Los Angeles, he kept thinking about Congo. He watched the country deteriorate in the 1990s as civil war took hold. On trips to visit his mother, who refused to move, Kintaudi says, "I started dreaming about doing something...
...where to begin? Kintaudi moved back to Kinshasa in the late 1990s and eventually directed a medical-residency program for the Eglise du Christ au Congo (ECC), an association of the major Protestant churches that operates more than 80 hospitals and 600 clinics. Half of the 40 doctors he trained in the first graduating class left the country. No doubt, Kintaudi explains, they found they could do better than the $30-a-month salary most doctors are paid in Congo...
Undaunted, Kintaudi and the ECC approached USAID with a plan to revive the country's devastated health-care system. They received a five-year $25 million grant, disbursed through Interchurch Medical Assistance, a nongovernmental organization based in the U.S., to set up 56 health zones located throughout the nation. (An additional 17 ECC-run health zones are funded by the World Bank.) A typical health zone serves 100,000 to 150,000 people with one hospital and about 20 health clinics, generally run by nurses...
...investment is starting to pay off, says Kintaudi, who serves as the collaborative effort's director. In five years, vaccination rates across the health zones have soared from 28% to 75%. More children are being treated for malaria. The number of women attended during childbirth is up. And many of the health zones have potable water. The next big hurdle: winning a second grant from USAID in 2006. But Kintaudi is in it for the long haul. "Success doesn't happen overnight," he says. "We have to act now to make a difference 100 years from...
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