Reaching survivors at the last-mile
Many survivors live in remote, hard-to-reach villages that lack health care services. Panzi’s mobile teams travel by plane, motobike, and foot to reach these survivors to deliver the world-class care they deserve—wherever they are.
Rapid Response missions
Armed militias often use rape as a weapon of war to exert power over terrorized communities. In many instances, they will commit mass rapes, forcing entire villages to flee their land and destroying the social fabric of the community. When Panzi receives word of a mass rape we deploy teams of doctors, psychosocial assistants, and legal advocates to provide care on-the-ground. In many of these instances, the teams are trekking for miles through dense forestation in areas that are militia-controlled, at great personal risk where no other NGO or humanitarian response is occurring. Once they reach survivors, they methodically and compassionately chronicle the crimes that these women and girls — and sometimes men as well — have endured.
mobile clinics
In addition to deploying emergency teams, Panzi also expands access to quality health care to health zones throughout eastern DRC through mobile clinics. These teams are comprised of medical staff, psychosocial assistants, and lawyers, and travel to health zones to identify and treat women and girls suffering from severe gynecological trauma, such as fistulas and organ prolapse. In addition to providing holistic care for these women, they also provide the health zones they are visiting with badly-needed medications and supplies, and provide general medical care for the entire community.
In addition, Panzi partners with local health clinics to ensure that they have a reliable stock of post-exposure prophylaxis kits, or “PEP kits.” These kits contain a powerful suite of drugs that can help prevent a survivor from becoming pregnant or contracting HIV or other STDs, if taken within 72-96 hours following a rape. This project is implemented by our partner, Global Strategies.
