Ulrich Crépin Namfeibona is head of the emergency team sent by Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders to respond to devastating floods that hit the east of Democratic Republic of Congo on the night of 4 May, leaving 400 people dead. This is his first person account.
It was shocking to arrive at the usually vibrant village, where we had often stopped off, to find it had nearly disappeared. More than half of the village had been washed away: the houses, the market, the fields, the cattle, the water system... All was rubble and destruction. The first thing we did was to help manage the crowd and triage patients. We identified which patients were the most critical ones, who needed specialist care to survive, and which ones were moderately injured so could be treated on the spot. Two patients with head trauma injuries died shortly after our arrival.
That same day we used the boat to transfer 16 seriously injured people from Nyamukubi to Kalehe. They had open and closed fractures, in the limbs, in the body, with polytraumas… As we only had enough fuel for a short trip, we took them first to the port of Kalehe, and then we made a series of journeys on a damaged unpaved road to take them to the town’s hospital, where they joined 59 other injured patients.
It was an extremely challenging operation, with difficult decisions to take, as not every relative could be taken on board. At some point I stopped asking patients about the whereabouts of their relatives; their answers often confirmed the loss of beloved ones.
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