BBC: DRC: A hopeful story

BBC NEWS | Africa | Breathing life into DR Congo's sick hospital: "When Professor Stanis Wembonyama became director of the main hospital in Democratic Republic of Congo's second city, Lubumbashi, last year, he could not believe what he saw.

Professor Stanis Wembonyama
Prof Wembonyama says the flowers he planted helps the patients recover more quickly
'The hospital did not even have a single thermometer, armed robbers had set up their base in some of the buildings and there was human excrement everywhere,' he told the BBC News website.

Most of the beds had been either stolen or stripped down and sold as scrap metal.

After years of gross mismanagement and financial problems at Gecamines, the state-owned mining monopoly which used to be in charge - theoretically - of the Jason Sendwe Hospital, the institution had been left to rot."