Bio: Roger L. Youmans

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Dr. Roger L. Youmans, the youngest of six children, grew up in Kansas City, Kansas with the dream of becoming a medical doctor. He graduated from the University of Kansas Medical School in 1958, and before completing his surgical residency there, took a leave of absence to direct a mission bush hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1961-62. Those were turbulent, desperate years for Congo.

Dr. Youmans and his family returned to Kansas where he finished his residency and passed his surgical boards. He went on to study French and tropical medicine in Belgium, and then returned with his wife and children to Congo. He worked 18 months as the only doctor (and the only foreign family) in the Wembo Nyama Hospital in the heart of Congo. In 1967 he returned to the University of Kansas Medical Center as an assistant professor of surgery and director of the emergency service. In 1970 he was asked to come back to Congo as the Chief of Staff of the 2,000-bed Kinshasa General Hospital, later renamed the Mama Yemo Hospital in honor of President Mobutu's mother. He returned to Congo as chief of staff of the hospital, and he led the transformation of that "cesspool of sickness" into the best hospital in central Africa.

Dr. Youmans spent the next 18 years in the practice of surgery in California, and as an associate professor of surgery in medical schools in Oklahoma. He again went to Africa and worked four years in rural hospitals and health centers in Ghana, and was a visiting professor of surgery in the medical schools of Ghana and Nigeria. He is now retired and living in Princeton, New Jersey with his wife.