Félicité gave birth on January 22 at Bossangoa hospital, Central African Republic. She walked miles, alone, to seek health care and give birth safely. No prenatal visits during pregnancy, no ultrasounds—nothing would have ever suggest her that that decision had saved her life and that of her baby.
Félicité needed C-section. Her baby, born underweight, came into the world with a rare tumor that develops at the base of the coccyx during pregnancy—a sacrococcygeal teratoma. Something very similar to a soccer ball, way bigger than the tiny body of the newborn.
“It’s an extremely rare tumor,” says Mara Carrupt, CUAMM nurse working at the CHUPB in Bangui. “One of those conditions that are almost never seen, and for this reason, they make the news even when treated in our hospitals in Italy.”
The hospital in Bossangoa, along with Dr. Enzo’s team, saved the mother with a cesarean section and cared for the baby until she was stabilized. However, no surgeries might have been performed on the baby in this last-mile facility in the Central African Republic. Félicité and her baby were urgently transferred to the capital on a humanitarian flight.
Bangui Pediatric Hospital is indeed the only referral center for pediatric emergencies in the country. It is the only facility where a pediatric surgery might be performed.
The staff at the Pediatric Complex vividly remember the arrival of the two. The mother’s face was frozen in fear, lost. From the very beginning, the entire hospital came together around them. On February 4, Dr. Enduma’s team took the baby into surgery. The procedure was delicate but successful—the mass was removed. Subsequent tests, including X-rays and an abdominal ultrasound, allowed doctors to rule out complications, but monitoring continued day and night for twenty days. There was always someone in the ward. At night, the nurses watched over the tiny crib, carefully following the precise instructions of Major Sylvie, the head nurse. From the medical staff to the nurses and even Félicité’s roommates, the initial anxiety turned into hope and strength.
The baby was finally out of danger.
Today, CUAMM team, aboard a 4×4, is driving the road from Bangui back to their home, a small village near Bossangoa. It is a distance that often marks the boundary between life and death. Instead, it now reveils a “miracle” as everyone at CHUPB is referring to.
“Perhaps this baby was truly born under a lucky star,” says Armelle Couvert, Cuamm Project Manager in Bangui. “She was born in a hospital, where Dr. Enzo’s team took care of her. And while a good star may have watched over her from above, guiding her fate, here on Earth, her journey was the result of an extraordinary humanitarian chain.”
