As a 71-year-old medical doctor trained at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and with a master’s degree in public health from the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine in health services organisation, Dr. Jean-Pierre Noterman has spent more than forty years of his life in Africa, much of it in DRC, particularly in the North Kivu region where he arrived for the first time in 1978. 

He is one of those Congolese and foreign doctors who during the 80’s contributed to the development of the country’s Health Zones, a time when the national health system, considered as pioneer in this field in Africa, had reached a unanimously recognised level of organisation. Unfortunately, for more than twenty years now, the major global health programmes, international and humanitarian organisations have completely reversed the still fragile gains achieved by imposing their priorities and procedures on the country, deconstructing the current health system making it unable to provide the population with quality health care accessible to all, despite the colossal amounts mobilised, which benefit operators and intermediaries more than the population. 

Since March 2021, Dr. Jean-Pierre Noterman has joined the team of the NGO ULB-Coopération in North Kivu where he is specifically involved in an innovative initiative to reorganize the Health Center, carried out at the request of the MSP. This initiative, which uses action research as a method of implementation, is inspired by the medical home model existing in other countries, developing the concept of family health. 

This Urban Medical Health Center action in Goma is part of the MSP’s desire to organize basic health services capable of offering quality care to all at the lowest cost while using modern technologies.