The Foreign Ministry announced this week that its MASHAV agency for international development has joined Israeli nonprofit aid organization Moriah Africa and the Los Angeles human rights organization Jewish World Watch to establish the first burn center in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The center will be housed in the large central government hospital in Bukavu.

According to a ministry media release, burns and their crippling, disfiguring after-effects are relatively widespread in this country of 65 million people, where almost the entire population continues to cook over open fires. A medical exchange effort involving Israel’s Rambam and Soroka hospitals, the medical exchange effort has brought expertise and initiative together for the purpose of expanding the surgical skill level and creatng a center for reparative plastic surgery which combines modern training, equipment, supplies, evaluation and follow-up.

Dr. Leon Mubenga, who underwent Phase I training at Rambam, returned to the Congo last week to start Phase II with Dr. Eldad Silberstein of Soroka, who is training surgeons from six local hospitals.