Beloved Congolese gynaecologist and most recent Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Denis Mukwege seldom ventures out by himself these days and requires 24-hour bodyguard protection to stay alive.
Mukwege, 63, is known as “Doctor Miracle,” for his ability to repair through reconstructive surgery the horrific damage inflicted on women who have been raped.
He, along with Nadia Murad, an Iraqi human rights activist, were last week awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2018 for “efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict.”
Mukwege has been “the foremost, most unifying symbol both nationally and internationally of the struggle to end sexual violence in war and armed conflict,” the Nobel Committee said.
The world-renowned surgeon told the Committee that he was in the operating theatre of the Panzi Hospital, which he founded in 1999, when he heard the news of his win.
“It was when I was operating and I heard people start to cry and it was so, so surprising,” he recalled. “I can see in the face of many women how they are happy to be recognised and this is really so touching.”
Born in 1955 in Bukavu, he went to medical school in Burundi and later studied gynaecology and obstetrics at the University of Angers in France.
He was inspired to become a doctor after numerous visits to see the sick with his preacher father.
Mukwege’s life has changed dramatically since he now lives under the permanent protection of UN peacekeepers at his hospital.
He was forced to flee his homeland after giving a September 2012 speech at the UN, in which he criticized President Joseph Kabila’s government and other countries for not doing enough to stop what he called “an unjust war that has used violence against women and rape as a strategy of war”.
The following month he was targeted by gunmen who broke into his home and briefly held his daughters hostage, according to news reports. In one incident, his trusted friend and security guard was killed in an attack.
The talented surgeon fled with his family to Sweden, then to Belgium.
He returned home in 2013 following a campaign by local women who raised funds to pay for his return ticket.
“After that gesture, I couldn’t really say no,” Mukwege recalled. “I am myself determined to help fight these atrocities, this violence.”
He placed his family and medical opportunities on hold to return to help his beloved people.
“My life has had to change, since returning,” he told the BBC’s Outlook in 2013. “I now live at the hospital and I take a number of security precautions, so I have lost some of my freedom.”
He set up the Panzi hospital in Bukavu almost 20 years ago, shortly after he had his first experience of treating a woman who had been raped and mutilated by armed men.
Mukwege will never forget the horrific injury the patient had suffered, telling the BBC the woman had not only been raped but bullets had been fired into her genitals and thighs.
In addition to the Nobel, Mukwege has also received the Seoul Peace Prize, a 2008 UN Human Rights Prize and was named African of the Year in 2009. He was also named by Time magazine as one of the world’s top 100 influential people.
He is on a growing list of Africans to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Others include Nelson Mandela, Bishop Desmond Tutu and Kofi Annan.
Panzi hospital, with a staff of 370, now cares for more than 3,500 women a year. Sometimes the beloved “Doctor Miracle” performs as many as 10 operations a day.
The country has been wracked by more than two decades of conflict, with numerous armed groups battling for control of the region’s rich deposits of gold and other precious minerals.
Many different militias have been accused of carrying out the indiscriminate rape of the region’s women. A top UN official in 2010 labelled the country “the rape capital of the world.”
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