We will be looking at the core of the background, which will be divided in five questions that we will answer, namely the genesis, the problematic, the objectives, the realizations, as well as a light but prudent outlook to the future projects.
First: GENESIS To all masters, all glory; we consider that it is just and true to begin by first telling you who the founder of the GABKUL Foundation is, before moving on further and knowing more about the Foundation herself. So who is the president of GABKUL Foundation? How did he come to realize his ambitions? What were his didactics? What are his working tools and what was his thinking process? Mr. Gabriel KULEMFUKA is of Congolese nationality. After his secondary school he decided to go to college and to study Orthopedics. He obtained a scholarship from OMS (the World’s Health Organization), which allowed him to follow a training in orthopedics from 1977 to 1980 in Lome, Togo, where heobtained his Diploma in Orthopedics.

He returned to the country in 1981, where he created, for the first time in his professional life, a non-profit association called “the Zairian Association for Rehabilitation by Orthese or Prothese,” also called ‘AZAIROP’. Four years later, that is in 1985, this time he obtained a second scholarship from the World Health Organization (OMS), for a training in orthopedic techniques at the Belgian Center of Orthopedics named CEBELOR in Brussels until 1987.

  

 

When he returned to the country, he created once more, during the same year,
private medical housing, called the Medical House Kin Orthopedics that was
located at 22 Avenue Bongolo, Kinshasa/Kalamu.

Considering the success of his realizations, the said private medical house, became affiliated to the Red Cross of Zaire through agreements on the contribution and financing of activities by the Red Cross at the provincial levels and with a monthly contribution. In 1988, a series of seminars were organized successively, first in Guinea-CONAKRY of the same year about technical help.

In 1990, he participated in a second seminar organized in Lome, Togo on technical help and patient’s care. Then he also participated to a course.

In the same year, this time in the scope of the national conference in Kinshasa, called the Sovereign National Conference, until 1992, where he represented the association of orthopedic technicians of Zaire, called ‘ATOZA’ which is presently called ‘ATOC’.

Once more he participated in 1996 to a training, this time in the scope of the
International Committee of the Red Cross, the “CICR”, which took place in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia, on the theme: the orthopedics’ components in polypropylene.

                

And so in 1997, after a long reflection on the mechanisms of assistance and patients care, and the care of those who are vulnerable, principally directed toward the people living with handicaps (the amputated, congenital malformation, etc.), as well as that of elders, street children, demobilized children soldiers, orphans of AIDS, widows, and in brief, all people that need a particular care and considerable and structured assistance according to the need to guarantee their daily life in short and medium term, in order to encourage their self independence in the long run. Motivated still with the same humanitarian spirit, the president of the GABKUL Foundation, proposed to concretize his dream by analyzing the mechanisms and the nature feasibility of creating a non-governmental organization or a non-profit association for humanitarian services. Its principal mission would be to assist or help, as much as possible, financially, materially, morally, and intellectually, all the people who are vulnerable. This as long as the assistance is targeting all the people that are in need, without any type of discrimination, that is, with no distinction of nationality, race, gender, age, religion or political appurtenance. To this fertile reflection, we must add his practical experience. In fact, after being sufficiently trained and toughened, and considering the exteriorization of the theoretical courses that he learned, and also being confronted to practical reality in his orthopedic profession. On January 15, 1998, the Ortho-prothesist Gabriel KULEMFUKA finally decided to create the GABKUL Foundation.

                

That is where he assumes, already, the missions of President of the said non-profit organization on an international level, which is of course in Africa. As the President of GABKUL Foundation, which he’d already been, during his seminar in Lome, he expressed his wish to see technical orthopedists be organized around an association at a global level. It is in this same order of thoughts that there is right now a federation of African Orthopedic Technicians, the ‘FATO’, which has it’s headquarters in Burkina Faso.
Consequently the Orthopedist, and Ortho-prothesist Gabriel KULEMFUKA is always available to participate, as much as possible, to national as well as international seminars, which cover subjects around Orthopedics.