Dr. Denis Mukwege & Eve Ensler

Description

Dr. Denis Mukwege is the winner of the 2008 United Nations Human Rights Prize. Over the past two decades, Dr. Mukwege has risked his life to save the lives of hundreds of women who have sought medical care and safety at The Panzi Hospital of Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of Congo. During the war and the subsequent, ongoing conflict, more than 5.4 million people have died and over 250,000 Congolese women and girls have been savagely raped, often killed by the severity of their injuries. The Panzi Hospital opened in 1999 and houses 334 women and girls, receiving an average of 10 new patients a day. As Director of the General Referral Hospital of Panzi, Dr. Mukwege’s tireless work on behalf of rape survivors has helped raise awareness of their plight to the international stage.

Eve Ensler, the American playwright and activist who wrote The Vagina Monologues, first met Dr. Denis Mukwege in 2006 when she interviewed him in New York about the rape crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Their conversation inspired Ensler to travel to the Congo to see Mukwege’s work for herself and hear stories of the women. She has since made two other trips to the Congo in the last year, writing a lengthy article for Glamour magazine about the doctor which launched the V-Day/UNICEF local, national and international campaign-- Stop Raping Our Greatest Resource: Power to the Women and Girls of the DRC.

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Link

http://www.cityarts.net/program.chrono.html