Newswise ? The Spine Africa Project, a U.S.-based non-profit organization that is focused on addressing spine injuries in the Eastern Congo, has released a documentary revealing the dire conditions within the Eastern Congo while conveying the mission and goals of this organization.
Official Video
Since 2008, spine specialist Dr. Richard Kaul and his medical team have been traveling multiple times per year to the Panzi Hospital in the South Kivu province of Eastern Congo to perform life saving spine surgeries for those who have been injured as a result of the ongoing violence and the perilous working conditions that exist within the country?s borders. The incidence of spinal injuries has burgeoned to an unacceptably high rate as compared to the rest of the world. Despite the proliferation of spinal injuries however, physicians within the Congo are neither educated nor trained in the treatment of these types of injuries. This lack of training severely impinges upon what can be done for patients with spinal injuries. As a result, these patients often return to their villages without treatment. Sadly, untreated patients have a life expectancy of less than two years due to the numerous debilitating complications associated with spinal injuries.
In a region where a family?s means of survival is completely dependent on each family member?s ability to work, injuries jeopardize a family?s existence. For men who are lucky enough to avoid or escape service in local militias, manual labor is the most common form of work. Men traditionally mine vast quantities of diamonds, cobalt, crude oil, and petroleum bases. These men often work in the "Conflict Mines," which have been a source of international humanitarian crisis. Men and children work 18-hour days in these mines without the benefit of safety protocols and are often tasked with physically daunting labor that includes crawling into mine shafts with no support systems, then lifting and removing boulders that weigh hundreds of pounds. They are also forced to excavate thousands of pounds of earth with only axes and shovels.
Women in this region traditionally find work in agricultural sector where the country's chief export are coffee beans and timber. To sell their goods the women set out at 4:00 a.m. daily and travel miles to the different marketplaces carrying packs on their backs weighing upwards of 200 pounds. This daily chore has led to an accelerated rate of spinal degeneration where women in their 20s and 30s exhibit extreme spinal pathology, such as severe multi-level disc herniations, spondylosis, and osteoarthritis that could easily be mistaken for the spines of women in their 70s and 80s. Additionally, women often suffer from malnutrition during pregnancy and when coupled with the virtual absence of prenatal care, an increased number of babies are born with deformities.
The paramount objective of The Spine Africa Project is the education and training of local physicians in the area of spinal medicine to enable the program to become a self-sustaining one in which local Congolese physicians will then train future physicians to be able to treat a variety of spinal conditions. This training is accomplished by the direct hands-on participation of local physicians during surgical procedures. Too often NGOs enter a region and create an environment of reliance that is based on the resources of their organizations. It is the mission of The Spine Africa Project is to create a self-sustaining medical program for the treatment of spinal conditions through education, training, and permanent resource allocation.
The documentary features footage filmed during Spine Africa?s February 2012 trip to the Eastern Congo as well as contributions from Adam Hochschild, author of the New York Times bestseller King Leopold's Ghost, and Nathaniel Houghton, founder of The Congo Leadership Initiative. This insightful and powerful documentary will shed light on the atrocious conditions within Congo where some of the most flagrant abuses of human rights in the entire world are a daily event.
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