The Nobel prize-winning gynaecologist counts Michaela Coel, Jill Biden and a small army of Congolese women among his fans. Yet he still won’t call himself a hero
In 1984,at the age of 29, Dr Denis Mukwege moved to France from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to complete his training as a junior obstetrician. It was his first trip to Europe, and he had spent half his life savings on the air fare. The city of Angers was to be his home for five years, but he struggled to make it one. He would arrange to view flats and on arrival would be told that they had just been let. It took him a while to figure out that it was his skin colour that was making apartments disappear. He finally found a home in a houseshare with other students.
When he took up his training position, he was astonished at how well staffed and equipped the hospital was compared with the one he had come from in the DRC, which delivered the same number of babies annually with just two doctors, as opposed to 30. Mukwege was already far more experienced than his peers in France. He had gained expertise beyond his years working in a small, under-resourced hospital where he operated on women and girls by torchlight and often broke away, mid-surgery, to consult medical literature for instructions.
