DR Congo Day 3: Meet “Ambulance by Chair” South Kivu Chronicles August 17, 2010

If you need transfer to hospital, this S Kivu clinic will carry you 4 km to the nearest hospital in this exact chair, the "Ambulance Chair"

Today we travelled to a regional health clinic to find out what services and deficits exist for pregnant women at risk for maternal death or vaginal fistula. We found a hard working, well trained, and devoted “Titular Nurse”. In this facility with no electricity, no lights except a kerosene lamp, dicey plumbing and a pharmacy stocked with one medication (Ampicillin), they do indeed deliver babies, but only the “easy” ones with no complications of labor, like obstructed labor, or infection, or prolapse of the umbilical cord, or fetal distress, or heavy bleeding. If a woman has a complication during labor (or for that manner any man, woman, child or infant whose care is beyond the capacity of this facility), and you can’t get to the hospital on your own, they literally put you in this chair and carry you 4 kilometers over incredibly rough terrain (even the goats stumble) to the regional hospital. It seems the ambulance broke about a year ago, and with no funding to fix it, emergency transport is carried out by “Ambulance Chair”.