Overall, administrators say, the hospital’s mortality rate has declined from 14 percent in the early 2000s to nine percent now.

Dr. Gody wants to replicate the hospital throughout the countryside. Doctors Without Borders operates a hospital in the capital and several clinics in rural areas, but only 35 local health centers exist in 230,000 square miles of territory.

One of them is in Bakala, far outside the capital, across a muddy river and past a sprawling camp for people who fled their homes because of violence. The barren clinic serves 12,000 people. It has no electricity and no doctor. The workers in charge include a nurse’s aide, one person who took a first aid course and a self-taught midwife.

The clinic has no water supply. A nearby well became unusable a year and a half ago after 10 corpses were dumped inside during a battle between militias. A worker travels by bicycle to the river to get water, sometimes three times a day, depending on the patient load.

Patients, including women in labor, who suffer complications must board motorbikes and travel across bumpy dirt roads for four hours to a clinic with better care, said Mathias Danga, deputy director of the center.

Dr. Gody knows it will be challenging to staff clinics like the one in Bakala. He can promise doctors financial incentives to move there, but even getting paychecks to them is a problem. Most areas have no banks, and round-trip travel by taxi to Bangui from places like Bakala costs almost two months’ salary.