Son of a Pentecostal pastor, he obtained his diploma with a specialty in biochemistry in 1974 and his medical degree in 1983. In 1984, he received a scholarship from the Swedish Pentecostal Mission to study to become a specialist in gynecology at the University of Angers in France. Along with another person from Anjou, France, he founded the organization “Esther Solidarity France-Kivu” to help the province of his birth. In 2015, he received the advanced degree of Doctor of Medical Sciences at the Free University of Brussels following the defense of his doctoral thesis, entitled “Etiology, classification and treatment of lower genital and genito-digestive trauma fistulas in eastern DRC.”
Although he had a well-paid job in France, in 1989 he chose to return to the Congo to run the Lemera Hospital, where he became the Medical Director. During the First Congo War in 1996, the hospital was brutally destroyed. Several patients and nurses were murdered, but with great luck, Dr. Denis Mukwege survived and took refuge in Nairobi. He decided to return to Congo, and with the help of PMU (a Swedish charity), he founded Panzi General Hospital in Bukavu. Shortly after the opening of the hospital, he saw the arrival of the first victims of extremely violent rape. They soon became more and more numerous. Responding to the deliberate and planned destruction of women's genitals has profoundly marked the rest of his career. He helped make known to the world the sexual barbarity where women are victims in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where gang rape is used as a weapon of war. To deal with this manmade epidemic, he became a specialist in the care of female victims of sexual violence. He developed a model of comprehensive, holistic care for these survivors. Physically, psychologically, economically, and legally, women receive holistic treatment, and benefit from support for multiple problems and over the long term.
On the medical side, he is recognized as one of the world's leading fistula specialists. He received the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Umeå (Sweden) in October 2010. In the same year, he received the Wallenberg Medal from the University of Michigan.
