Abstract From the late years of Belgian colonialism to the turbulent early 1990s, the Institut Medical Evangelique (IME) was the largest and most famous interdenominational Protestant hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Its growth in the 1960s and 1970s shows how assumptions about the decline of health care in the DRC after colonialism did not correspond with the evolution of hospitals. The number of missionary physicians and other staff expanded as well until the late 1970s, as mission boards became less supportive of IME. The hospital also struggled to recruit and keep Congolese doctors until the late 1980s, in part because the scarcity of Congolese doctors created financial opportunities. Once political instability led missionaries to largely withdraw after 1991, Congolese doctors and administrators took full control over the hospital.
Jeremy Rich (Sat,) studied this question.