Dr Denis Mukwege

Dr Denis Mukwege is a world-renowned gynaecological surgeon, president and founder of Panzi Hospital and Foundation in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

As a young child he accompanied his father, a pastor, on visits to sick members of the community. It inspired him to become a doctor: he had realised that prayer alone was not enough to heal those who were suffering. He decided to specialise in gynaecology and obstetrics after observing that patients at Lemera Hospital received insufficient care, leaving them with life-altering complications in childbirth — fistulas and prolapse.

He founded Panzi Hospital in 1999, intending it to be a centre of excellence for maternal health care in a country with one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. The first patient through Panzi’s doors, however, was not a pregnant woman coming to deliver her child, but a woman who had been raped with extreme brutality, as a weapon of war. Dr Mukwege and his staff were forced to become experts in one of the worst specialities in medicine — the treatment of conflict-related sexual violence and the severe gynaecological trauma it causes.

Since 1999, Dr Mukwege and his staff at Panzi Hospital and Foundation have helped to care for more than 91,000 survivors of sexual violence.

The hospital does not only treat physical wounds; it also provides legal, psychosocial and socio-economic reintegration services. Dr Mukwege has been fearless in pressing for greater protection for women and for those responsible for sexual violence to be brought to justice — including the Congolese government and the armed groups laying siege to eastern Congo.

In 2012 he was violently attacked and his family held at gunpoint at his home in an assassination attempt; his trusted bodyguard was killed. The attack came several weeks after he denounced the country’s sixteen-year conflict and called for those responsible to be brought to justice in a speech at the United Nations.

Dr Mukwege and his family fled the country. His Congolese patients and survivors urged him to resume his work, some selling fruit and vegetables at local markets to raise the fare for his return. Vowing to continue despite the risk, he returned to eastern Congo in January 2013 and was met by crowds celebrating his homecoming.

Now, with the recognition of world leaders, he is more committed than ever to lasting peace in Congo. He envisions a future in which the root causes of conflict are addressed, reducing the need for his medical interventions. “You can’t operate against violence,” he says. “You can only abolish it.”

Dr Mukwege is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost gynaecological surgeons in the treatment of wartime sexual violence. His body of work, which includes dozens of academic articles, has made him the leading specialist globally. Universities around the world have awarded him honorary degrees, from Harvard in 2015 to Ritsumeikan University in Japan in 2019.