Shops pierced the darkness. Night after night, the 44-year-old doctor from Guinea held onto hope that the besieged city would somehow survive. Then, one morning at the end of January, the call came: he and the remaining international staff needed to be evacuated immediately.
“We took the last flight,” he recalls.
A few hours later, Goma fell into the hands of M23. The rebel group led by the Tutsis, backed by neighboring Rwanda, had achieved its most daring military victory to date.
For most, it would have been the end: a narrow escape, a mission cut short. But as the plane ascended, he knew he would return. The only question was: how long would it take?
Dr. Thierno Baldé, 45, led the WHO response to Goma after the city fell to M23 Rebels in early 2025.
A Reluctant Interlude
Back in Dakar, where he leads the World Health Organization (WHO) emergency response for West and Central Africa, Dr. Baldé felt restless. Reports of civilian massacres continued to emerge from northern Kivu, each new detail cutting deeper. His colleagues were left behind. With every grim report, his conviction grew stronger: his place was with them.
Two weeks later, on his 45th birthday, he was deployed to lead the agency’s response in eastern DRC. He kept his mission a secret from his parents in Conakry, his hometown, to spare them fear.
“I only told them once I was already there,” he admitted, almost shyly. His wife and two children had long grown accustomed to watching him disappear into the world’s most dangerous crises.
Return to Ruins
It took him five days to reach Goma. By then, the airport was closed, and the roads were filled with checkpoints.
The city he found was devastated. Power lines were down, hospitals were overflowing with the wounded, and the streets were reportedly strewn with bodies. Fear settled like ash after a fire on every face. “In 15 days, everything had changed.”
His team was exhausted. About twenty Congolese staff members, worn out from fatigue, had struggled to keep the city’s fragile healthcare system functional. He gave half of them days off to recover, though every pair of hands was desperately needed. It was the least he could do.
Yet, amidst the devastation, there was a stroke of fortune. Unlike most other United Nations agencies, WHO warehouses had not been looted. They became lifelines, providing fuel for hospital generators, surgical kits for the injured, and cellphones to coordinate emergency evacuations.
However, the figures were staggering, with initial reports indicating up to 3,000 dead. The bodies needed to be handled quickly to prevent disease spread.
“We had to ensure quick burials within a specific timeframe,” he said, noting that WHO ended up paying local gravediggers to retrieve the corpses.
The Spectrum of Cholera
On the day of his return, another disease emerged: cholera. The first cases were confirmed in a Monusco camp, where hundreds of disarmed Congolese soldiers and their families sought refuge after losing the city to the M23 militia. The United Nations peacekeeping mission bases, designed for blue helmets, were not built to accommodate large numbers of civilians. Sanitary conditions were poor, and the disease spread quickly.
That night, Dr. Baldé couldn’t sleep.
The next morning, he entered the camp and found patients lying on the ground. There were 20 or 30 people, with just one doctor, he recalls. Two had already died.
For days, his team rushed to stem the tide, using chlorine for disinfection, protective gear, makeshift isolation areas, and recruiting and training staff on-site. Vaccines were rushed in from Kinshasa.
Rumors Spread Through the City
However, rumors spread rapidly through the city.
“People began saying, ‘Cholera is exploding in Goma and is out of control.’” He, who had come for humanitarian relief, now faced an epidemic on his hands.
“We had to completely reevaluate our approach,” he said. The specter of another Haiti, where the UN had a role in a 2010 cholera outbreak, overshadowed every decision.
Meanwhile, another disease spread. MPOX, once confined to sprawling camps of displaced people on Goma’s outskirts, now overtook the city itself. These camps, housing hundreds of thousands displaced by earlier violence waves, had emptied amidst Goma’s fall.
“The patients found themselves in the community,” he said.
Sitting in Front of the Rebels
Then came armed men. One afternoon, they burst into the WHO compound without warning. Were they under M23 orders, acting alone, or mere criminals? It hardly mattered. The staff appeased them, persuading them to leave, but the incident was clear. Without some understanding with the de facto authorities
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