DR Congo Position Paper WHO

Country: DR CONGO

Committee: WHO

Agenda Item:

Measures to improve the mental health services in developing countries

The question of limited health care access in developing countries

Elimination of sexually transmitted infections with a special focus on sex education

The question of maintaining the ethicality of medical tourism while ensuring equality

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is one of the central African countries. It is located in the Sub-Saharan region and its population of almost 5 million people. Life expectancy at birth is almost 60 and we are one of the least developed countries in the World. It is the second-largest country in Africa. It has 200 ethnic groups and nearly 250 different languages. It has the oldest natural parks in the region. %10 of the population has electricity. The country is rich with gold, titanium and tin.

We are going to focus mostly on medical tourism. We believe that Congo is not a developed country. Currently, our health system is not in good condition. Our country cannot accept any foreigner patient. We believe that we have increased our economy. Afterwards, we have to invest in medicine so that we can high quality doctors and educators. We need to build new hospitals across the country to help more and more people. We think that medical tourism can be both useful and harmful. If a citizen needs an operation and this operation can’t be done in his or her own country, this city should be allowed to have an operation in another country. On the contrary, if all citizens go abroad for medical tourism, this would damage the country’s economy as the money will be sent to another countries budget. We believe medical tourism can be ethical if there is an urgent health situation.

According to the information given by usaid.gov, Congo has renewed its health system on a large scale. We are trying to fight against child death and malaria. However, malaria is one of the major problems in Congo and we have AIDS/ HIV and sleeping sickness. We are trying to increase our health services. In DR of Congo, we have to fight against Ebola, yellow fever and TB. We need more help to end these medical problems.

We believe that mental health hospitals are not enough. We should build more hospitals in our country and other countries which need more medical services. To build more hospitals we need funds. Our primary goal to make money to build new hospitals is to sell our natural resources such as gold, titanium and tin. In the beginning, we need other countries to help to establish our new health system. If we get more help, we can establish more and more health care centres.