I met women with newborns who were still locked into maternity wards six months after delivery, because they were not able to pay for the services. I saw dying patients who had no assistance, because health personnel were on strike. I walked through empty hospital rooms with no equipment. Despite the end of the war, the collapsing health care system still causes 45,000 people – half of which are children under five – to die on a monthly basis, most because of preventable diseases like malaria, pneumonia, diarrhea or malnutrition. Hospitalized patients have to obtain their own medicines and sometimes even the medical materials needed to treat them. The pharmacies in public medical structures are often empty or at best undersupplied, and patients, if they can afford it, have no choice but to turn to the informal sector, which is costly, unregulated and sometimes dangerous. The fee-charging system in place is simply beyond the means of most Congolese. Demotivated medical staff, working for a pittance, take their pay from patients’ direct contributions. This grossly inadequate and costly service is partly to blame for the public sector being abandoned.