War Hospital in Rutshuru, Congo.

2008-10-25–2008-10-28

Rutshuru lies seventy kilometres north of Goma. The battered road in between is the blood stream of the area, providing fruits and vegetables for the city, soap and phones for the country side. The CNDP-rebels often attack the road, since it is close to the Rwandan border and works as a corridor for import of weapons and export of minerals. Most of the time the rebels hold the road for some days, before they return it to the army. Not this time. Instead, the bombs are coming closer and closer until every road leading in and out of Rutshuru is cut off.  Some local hospital staff has fled, at the same time as wounded people start coming in. In the operating theatre American doctor Jordy Cox and Claude Wani from the Ivory coast receive a man who has been shot in the heart and a woman who has had her legs blown off. - Get an anaesthetist here NOW, this guy is dying! Jordy Cox shouts. Outside, the village is taken over by the rebels. The staff can only hope that their policy of treating anyone who arrives at the hospital – civilians as well as rebels and soldiers – will be enough of a life insurance for them.

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