DRC: Goma surgical teams overwhelmed

The city came under fire from heavy artillery and explosives, leading to a massive influx of wounded people to the city’s medical facilities, particularly CBCA Hospital, where the ICRC provides support for war surgery. In late January and early February, the hospital was flooded with patients, and the surgical teams treated more than 1,200 wounded people. The three other hospitals supported by the ICRC in the area were also overloaded.

Moses SawaSawa took these photographs inside CBCA Hospital, giving us a glimpse of what it was like there in early February.

The ICRC has been supporting Bethesda CBCA Hospital, in the Ndosho part of Goma in North Kivu, since 2012, increasing its ability to handle the particularities of war surgery. Similar programmes have been running since 2013 at the Bukavu general referral hospital in South Kivu, since 2019 at the Beni general referral hospital, and since 24 January 2025 (as an emergency project) at the North Kivu Provincial Hospital.

In January and February 2025, more than 1,900 people newly wounded by weapons were treated under the ICRC’s four war surgery programmes in eastern DRC; CBCA Hospital alone treated nearly 1,300 of them. That’s almost half the total number of people it treated for wounds from weapons in all of 2024 (2,935).

A tent was put up on the hospital premises to treat and release people with minor injuries to make more space for severe cases inside the hospital.

Of the 1,900 wounded people treated in January and February in the four ICRC-supported hospitals in North and South Kivu, 20% were women and 12% were children under 15.

A surgical team operates on a girl wounded by the fighting.

Riziki was running her small shop in Bweremana, about 40 km west of Goma, when she was hit by fragments from an explosion. She and many others who were severely wounded have a long road to recovery in hospital.

Riziki resting in her hospital room.

Over the two months, ICRC teams carried out an average of 65 operations per day in the four hospitals where they were working.

People wounded in Goma wait to be operated on.

The use of heavy artillery in armed conflict in eastern DRC is causing a growing number of very severe injuries that are tremendously difficult to treat and to recover from. They often require amputations and exceedingly complex surgeries.

At the CBCA Hospital, 70% of the wounded people treated in January and February were civilians.

Kashindi Mariam is taking care of her daughter, who was hit by fragments from an explosion while they were fleeing the fighting in Bweremana, about 40 km west of Goma.

At the CBCA Hospital, 75% (970) of the wounded people treated in January and February had been wounded by gunshots and 23% (292) by explosions.

A medical worker holds up an X-ray showing a bullet lodged in a patient’s skull.

Some of the patients hit by explosions had injuries to multiple areas of the body (head, torso and limbs) and very dirty wounds. Most of them have to undergo multiple operations: the first to debride the wounds (cut away dead tissue and remove foreign bodies, debris and bits of broken bone) and a second operation for primary wound closure (which is delayed, where possible). If that ideal situation does not work out, more surgeries may be needed.

A patient wounded in an explosion is prepped for surgery.

Like many of those who have been wounded, Elia Habimana will need physical therapy, which he can do through the ICRC’s programme at the Shirika La Umoja (“community leads to unity”) centre, which also provides orthotics, prostheses and wheelchairs. 

By the end of February, eight prostheses/orthotics had been fitted and eight pairs of crutches had been given to patients at CBCA Hospital, to help them get around.

Twenty-five-year-old Elia Habimana lost his right leg because of a severe bullet wound. He now has to get around on crutches.

The influx of wounded patients led to a shortage of beds for them: CBCA Hospital was at 148% capacity and the four hospitals together were at 206% capacity over January and February.

What’s more, the ICRC’s medical warehouse was looted the night of 28 January. The equivalent of twenty 40-foot-long containers of medication was taken.

Thanks to the solidarity of the humanitarian organizations in Goma, the ICRC was able to keep treated the wounded while it awaited deliveries to restock what had been taken.

ICRC staff members unload boxes of medicine.