Panzi Hospital's One-Stop Centre Model for Survivors of Sexual Violence

Panzi General Referral Hospital in Bukavu, South Kivu (DRC), founded by Dr. Denis Mukwege, developed the One-Stop Centre (OSC) model of care for survivors of sexual violence, structured around four integrated pillars — medical/surgical treatment, psychosocial support, legal assistance, and socio-economic reintegration — delivered at a single site by a multi-disciplinary team of doctors, nurses, lawyers and paralegals.

The OSC delivers all four pillars of care together at one site, rather than referring survivors between separate services.

A peer-reviewed PLOS Medicine study documents 48,482 women treated for extreme sexual violence and a further 37,382 for related gynaecological complications between 1999 and 2015. UNFPA separately reports supporting roughly 50,000 survivors with medical treatment, and a similar number with psychosocial support, between 2013 and 2019 in partnership with the Panzi model.

UNFPA now co-funds one-stop centres modelled after Panzi's approach at other DRC sites and describes the model as a template for trauma-informed survivor support in other conflict settings; Dr. Mukwege received the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize for this work. The evidence base is descriptive — patient volumes and case narratives — rather than a comparative outcomes trial, and neither source provides quantitative comparison of outcomes for survivors receiving all four pillars versus fewer.