1974-1983

1974 saw steady progress for the building of the hospital. At one point, the Medical Benevolence Foundation arranged for the Beckley West Virginia Hospital, which was closing in the US, to send major hospital equipment to IMCK. Medical personnel and staffing for the new hospital was formed by many who had worked at other mission hospitals, by local medical workers, former IMCK graduates, and missionaries from the Presbyterian and Mennonite churches. On January 20, 1975, the Good Shepherd Hospital was dedicated and opened in a festive event celebrated by students and faculty, the government, community, Congolese churches, and representatives from American churches and the Medical Benevolence Foundation. The four hospital pavilions had 150 beds, operating and delivery rooms, a lab, x-ray, pharmacy, dietary facility, and administration.  At this occasion, Rev. Mbiya Mulumba Bantu Balengele prayed, “Lord, let your people gather here and find help in healing, and find peace and health through your instruments which are the doctors, nurses, teachers, students, and all the paramedical personnel.”  Indeed, the Good Shepherd Hospital was composed of many people. The cooking was done outside at first and it was not until years later, when the hydroelectric facility was completed, that the cooking was converted to a system with electric cooking pots. Laundry was also initially done by hand!  And there is always staff working to keep every thing running and to repair broken things!  There are many faithful workers who worked in the operating room, managed personnel and directed men’s dorms and the school choir. When the IMCK doctors gathered here at the celebration in 1974, they knew that their medical care could never be given without all of the support staff of IMCK.

1975 was also the year that medical interns began to work at Tshikaji, following graduation from the national medical school in Kinshasa. For most years since 1975, four to five interns have come to work and study each year. This has been an enriching program for IMCK through the years. Their hard work and learning have helped sick patients, helped with preventive medicine and strengthened the academic atmosphere of medical learning.

About the time the new hospital opened, the Ecole Unie de Theologie at Ndesha began an agreement with IMCK to teach courses in clinical pastoral counseling, using the hospital setting. The program was designed in four or ten week intense courses to train ministers and seminary students to gain personal growth and pastoral skills in a clinical setting.  Through all these exercises, they were empowered to grow personally and equipped to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ more effectively. Through the years, pastors with this training have served patients and staff, held daily chapel services, and provided vital counseling and spiritual needs.

In 1976, Dr. Benoit Nzengu was the first Congolese physician to come to work at IMCK. He had been an early graduate of the IMCK nursing program, then proceeded to college and medical school. He worked on the faculty, provided medical care, and worked particularly to help set up a central pharmacy in the late 70s for the net work of IMCK dispensaries and of Presbyterian Church hospitals and dispensaries of the region. Because of financial and organizational problems, this centralized system did not last to the present. Other methods of procuring drugs for both IMCK and for Congo church hospitals and dispensaries have developed over the years.

A lingering problem in medical work in the 70s was the lack of medical lab technicians educated in a formal program. Workers, who learned by apprenticeship to make lab diagnoses of such diseases as TB, diabetes, malaria, sleeping sickness, anemia, and renal diseases, were doing most lab work. In 1975 the government requested that IMCK open a medical laboratory technician section and IMCK opened such a section in 1976. The first five graduates finished their three-year program in 1979. As part of their education, these students did clinical work at IMCK, at dispensaries, and at Presbyterian hospitals in the Kasai. This was one of only two such schools in the Congo.  Graduates from this program went on in the next decade to be critical staff for hospitals and clinics in the Kasai and throughout the Congo.   

A continuing problem for IMCK in 1978 was the need for electrical power. Generators were being used for short periods of the day, using fuel, which cost a great deal. An engineer came to IMCK to write a proposal for a hydroelectric dam to be built close to the hospital on the Lubi lua Mpata River. This was a project that would be funded by the Medical Benevolence Foundation, USAID, the German Protestant Church, and the Presbyterian Church. This was a nine-year project that would require the work of hundreds of people.                                 
Dr Walter Hull, the medical director, cited the following IMCK activities as of 1979, the 25th year of IMCK:

• The new Good Shepherd Hospital, because it had a regular supply of drugs, materials, and personnel, was functioning as the principal inpatient facility for the region, with a population of about 400,000.

• The IMCK Kananga Polyclinic was seeing about 40,000 patient visits a year.

• A mobile public health team, which traveled with students, was providing preschool clinics at 34 different locations 44 different visits/month. The program was registering 8,000 new children each year.

• IMCK was housing a central drug depot for the purchase and distribution of drugs to some 35 rural CPZa dispensaries in the Kasai.

• The nursing school and medical lab technician schools were running, filled to capacity.

• The Internship training program for medical school graduates was in effect.

• The only ophthalmologist in central Congo worked at IMCK

• The previous year, staff physicians had spent over 250 days visiting outlying church hospitals in consulting capacity.

• IMCK was conducting the only cervical screening program outside the capitol.

• The IMCK medical lab was one of the best in the region, rendering consulting services to the area.

• An X-ray tech-teaching program was functioning sporadically.

• A pathologist was visiting 6 months a year, providing the only such service in Congo outside of the capital.

• Periodically visiting orthopedic physicians were performing major corrective surgery. A Catholic rehab program in Kananga, called Jukayi! (Meaning stand up!) Was helping with IMCK orthopedic rehabilitation programs.

• One to two week continuing education courses were being offered once or twice a year to graduate nurses from Protestant, Catholic and government medical facilities.

  

   

The early 80’s marked a period in which Congolese began to take over the leadership of IMCK. In 1980 Pierre Shamba became the first Congolese named Hospital Administrator. He would serve in that position for over twenty years. In the early 80s, Dr. Mulaja Mukendi, an IMCK nursing student, who later went to medical school, returned to Tshikaji to join the medical staff. During the 80s, Dr. Ngoyi Andre, a surgeon, became the first Congolese to become Medical Director at IMCK. In 1982 Musamadi Lushanga became the first Congolese Director of the Nursing School. These early Congolese health care givers and administrators provided examples of commitment, leadership and pioneering.

In 1981, IMCK purchased the old Pax Hotel in Kananga and turned it into a medical facility with multiple clinics: medical, obstetrics, gynecology, pediatrics, surgery, and a special eye clinic. Called the Polyclinique or PAX, it was also equipped with a lab, a new X-ray machine, and a dental clinic. Solar power was used for various aspects of this clinic. The physicians and dentists were Congolese, Europeans and American. The Congolese physicians, dentist, nurses, dental assistants, lab techs and other staff in this clinic were dedicated and well trained. People from all over the region came, still come, to Kananga for service from this clinic.

IMCK’s example in community health was one of the models used to develop the national Sante Rurale (SANRU) project, a government sponsored project that began in 1982.  Funded by USAID and administered by the health office of the Eglise du Christ au Zaire, SANRU assisted the Ministry of Health plan 306 Health Zones throughout the country. This program placed emphasis on village clinics, where nurses lived and physicians visited regularly. Tshikaji Health Zone already had maps on the wall, dispensaries managed by local committees, regular Zone meetings with the different providers and donors, emphasis on nutrition, immunizations, and family planning. These activities gradually became routine as many other health zones in the country developed their programs.

The curriculum for nursing taught over the years included the following: physiology, anatomy, pathology, pharmacology, lab skills, fundamentals of nursing, medicine with emphasis on tropical medicine, surgery, public health, obstetrics and gynecology, and many hours of clinical or stage. The course work was and still is demanding and is conducted in French. The curriculum for the Medical Technology Laboratory School, also demanding, includes the following: Chemistry, parasitology, urinalysis, hematology, blood bank, virology, and fungi.

1983 marked the end of the third decade.  By this time, IMCK Congolese doctors, nurses and lab technicians were providing much of the medical care, teaching, and public health. The total graduates for these first 30 years: nursing school 268, med lab tech school 16, and dental 11 and medical interns and residents 27.