For years, Dr. Georges Bwelle has been commuting to remote villages in Cameroon on weekends, providing critical healthcare free of charge to poor communities. DW's Blaise Eyong recently accompanied Bwelle on a two-day trip from the capital Yaounde to Mokolo.
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00:00My name is George Bwede, I'm a chemo-immune visceral surgeon working in Yaounde Central
00:12Hospital.
00:13We are an association of volunteers named ASCOVIM, a group of young people and some
00:27retired doctors.
00:29We mix and we create a team who leave Yaounde every weekend and set up a mobile hospital
00:37in a village.
00:39During these two days of treatment, we receive all the population of the underprivileged
00:47people of the village and give them free health services.
00:52Our goal is 200 surgeries, so we are still waiting patients coming all over the villages
00:59and you know, even if after, when you do the 200, you have another one, 201, 202, 203,
01:07and the patient is going to miss this because some of them are in their farm now, far from
01:12here and they don't know about the program.
01:18My father was ill for 23 years.
01:20He was having a blood inside the brain.
01:27There was only one neurosurgeon in Douala and it wasn't easy to meet him.
01:31So we were like 200 or 300 people waiting for that neurosurgeon and my dad told me,
01:37when you graduate, I know your aim is to be a doctor, when you graduate, be a specialist
01:42and take care of the people who don't have means to meet the specialist.
01:47That's why we created ASCOVIM, not to stay in the hospital waiting patients, but to go
01:53beyond all kinds of places to meet the patients on their places and to treat them there.
02:03This kind of patient, without this kind of occasion, without this kind of opportunity,
02:23they stay with their illness and those illness grow.
02:26That's why sometimes you can see a patient with the hernia, the patient has 44 years
02:31and the hernia also 44 years because he was born with it and without means to take care,
02:37you have this kind of huge patient, huge, huge, huge pathology.
03:01In the rural area, with the poverty, they want to go to the hospital, but they don't
03:17have money to buy their medication or to come in the hospital, so they stay for long with
03:23their illness.
03:24So the main thing you will see is that you will see the illness, but you will see it
03:29at a last stage.
03:31Eight or nine, I'm in the hospital, so doing my normal work till four.
03:39At four p.m., I'm a teacher going to the university, teach students till seven.
03:45And then at seven, doing my private clinic.
03:48This private clinic can finish at midnight, but this private clinic are very important
03:55because this is the main source of the, who can finance all the Ascovim activities because
04:02we don't have permanent support.
04:06We have spontaneous support, but not permanent support.
04:11I'm a man who knows that this is what God asked me to do and this is what I'm doing.
04:16I'm so happy.