Professor Abel Ntambue is Professor (PhD at Université Libre de Bruxelles) of Epidemiology at the School of Public Health at the University of Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Prof. Ntambue sat down with his collaborator Dr. Karen Cowgill, as well as Dr. Alissa Jordan, for a conversation on his research into hospital detention and how it connects to his personal background as a professor, scholar, and a husband. In this clip, Ntambue discusses the ways that alliances are built in hospital spaces, how detained mothers seek food, resources, and assistance from both medical staff and other mothers. Please see the English transcript of Ntambue's comments below, graciously provided by Dr. Karen Cowgill:
The first thing is that there is a type of solidarity that exists, that exists between, first, the staff, particularly the nurses and midwives, and the rest, even, if they are aware –everything depends on the attitude of the woman. At times, the nurses manage to take up a collection among themselves to help this woman. So, sharing, sharing food, that, yes.
Secondly, there are women who are not detained, the women who pay normally but who receive a lot of visits, and with a lot of visits, a lot of food. Those women, who are in a normal situation, end up sharing food with the women who are – who are in difficulty. So those are the common situations that are documented, so the women who delivered in the maternity and are not detained and receive food, they eat – bread, tea, coffee – and share with those who don’t have the means and are detained. That is common here, one sees those cases.
The nurses who receive something that they share, but I haven’t seen those cases there, because sometimes they must beg, they go begging to the others to find something to eat. So if a mother is lacking something to eat, it’s very difficult.
But in terms, now, of leaving – how are they going to leave? Yes, sometimes there are religious services that pass through the maternity to pray, the [aumoine (alms) or homme] who go to pray, there are also churches that arrange, like, services by week to distribute food in hospitals, so the women survive, because at that point when there are religious services come through, they have the opportunity to have some food. It’s thanks also to these religious services, for example, that they can find the possibility – as a function, obviously, of bills – to be freed. At that time, for example, one might ask the hospital to cut the bill in half, or accept what’s available – the politicians do the same thing – but solidarity among the detained women, if it exists, it’s more supported by the women who are not detained, who leave because, you see, they receive an excess of food, since they can’t throw it out, they will then try to help those who are altogether [without means].