International humanitarian NGO Medair, active in northeastern DRC for over a decade, has committed resources from its Emergency Fund to provide urgently needed drugs and health care support for thousands of people displaced by recent outbreaks of conflict.
The UN has confirmed that villages in Dungu territory were attacked by militia from the Ugandan rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) on 17 September. OCHA estimates that between 43,000 and 100,000 people have been displaced in Dungu territory.
Medair's health supervisors have witnessed a large influx of IDPs in Dungu, with more people continuing to arrive every day. For now, these vulnerable people are being hosted by local families, but the sheer number of IDPs is quickly overcrowding homes and straining already limited resources. Such conditions are ripe for the spread of infectious disease.
"They are arriving here hungry and visibly exhausted," said a Medair health supervisor in the city of Dungu. "Many of them have lost everything."
Jean de Dieu Mopanga, coordinator for Medair's health supervisors, left Isiro on 26 September in a 4x4 loaded with medicines, bound for Dungu, a journey that took three days. He is now working with local partners and Medair health supervisors already in the region to ensure that primary health care and medicines are made available for free to vulnerable IDPs.
The DRC army (FARDC) and the UN force in the country (MONUC) had been planning action to oust the vicious LRA from this region, but the rebels struck first.
In the village of Nambili, Medair health supervisors witnessed no adults in the wake of LRA attacks, just children. They speculated that the adults may have been abducted, or were still in hiding.
As conflict continues to displace people from their homes, Medair will work to ensure that free health care is made available for them, and medicines are distributed to contain any outbreaks of disease.
Since 1998, the International Rescue Committee estimates that an astonishing 5.4 million people have died in DRC from war-related causes, particularly from hunger and disease. For 11 years, Medair has provided emergency relief and rehabilitation in the country for millions of suffering people. Now, with violent conflict tragically escalating once again, Medair applies its expertise from over a decade of experience to bring urgent life-saving assistance to the most vulnerable of DRC.
"What struck me most about Medair," said Alphonsine Unwang, the joint co-ordinator of local NGO SYNERGIE, "is that it stayed during the war, when other health centres and NGOs either closed or left the country. Because Medair stayed and continued to act, despite the violence and danger, it is the most respected organisation in the entire region."
Medair brings life-saving relief and rehabilitation in disasters, conflict areas, and other crises by working alongside the most vulnerable. Its internationally recruited staff are motivated by their Christian faith to care for people in need, providing practical and compassionate support, regardless of race, religion, or politics. Founded in 1989, Medair has an unwavering commitment to bring hope to the world's most vulnerable.
[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
Men work among the debris of a partially collapsed school in Belyayevka, near Orenburg in the southeastern Ural mountains, October 1, 2008. A staircase collapsed in the school in the provincial ...
