Press release Kinshasa, 6 November 2009: Seven sites of a vaccination campaign by Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo, recently found themselves under fire in attacks by the Congolese army against one of the major rebel groups, the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR) .
Assisting the national health service, MSF began a mass vaccination campaign Saturday, the 17th of October 2009 in the territory of Masisi in response to a measles epidemic. The medical teams of MSF were vaccinating thousands of children in Ngomashi and Kimua, areas controlled by the FDLR. Although they had received guarantees of security by all the parties involved in this conflict for the vaccination in these areas and at this time, the Congolese army launched the attacks at each of the seven sites of vaccination. All of the people who had come to have their children vaccinated fled the intense battles and are now under safety. The MSF teams had to stop their activities in these areas and have been repatriated to the city of Goma.
“We feel that we were used as bait.” explained Christopher Stokes, General Director of MSF. “The attacks coincided with the beginning of the vaccination campaign and the MSF teams, as well as thousands of civilians, found themselves trapped under fire. These attacks represent an extreme risk to the lives of civilians, and an unacceptable utilisation of humanitarian actions to serve military objectives. How will the population consider MSF from now on? Will our patients still feel that they are under security with us? We have chosen to strongly denounce this situation, because our neutrality has been compromised.”
MSF is an independent medical humanitarian organization which provides medical services without discrimination and in strict respect to the principle of neutrality. This neutrality permits MSF teams to vaccinate in areas controlled by the FDLR, which are inaccessible to personnel of the national health system.
The last few months have seen an augmentation of attacks against humanitarian organizations by different armed groups in North and South Kivu.
“MSF asks all parties in this conflict to respect the work of humanitarian organizations”, adds Meinie Nicolai, MSF director of operations. “It is the population who pay the consequences. Already exhausted by the extreme violence and incessant displacements, today they risk being cut off from humanitarian aid.
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165 000 children between the ages of 6 months to 15 years have been vaccinated against measles as of today. In the territory of Masisi, MSF aids a hospital and a health center, and provides mobile health clinics and vaccination campaigns. MSF also provides health services in the territories of Walikale, Rutshuru and Lubero, as well as in the province of South Kivu. MSF has been working in North Kivu since 1992.
Friday, November 06, 2009
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
October / November posting
One big project down: we closed the site of Kabizo last week. Although the closing of a site is not the most pleasant of events, it went well. My changes to the payroll software for the final payment worked like a charm! And the team on site did a great job of communicating with the staff, helping them put together their résumés and to apply for jobs available in our other sites. Even the government made some concessions, making it easier for the staff to apply for government-run training to help them with reinsertion. We also paid a big portion of the final payments here and the other sites, so that the staff didn’t have to travel with a lot of money on them – road robberies are a common thing here.
But with the closing of Kabizo, and the down-sizing of the Kayna project, I should have some more time to concentrate on the long-term projects. At least, until we open up a few more sites.
Here in Goma, we are doing a lot of recruiting. We just hired a psychologist (to work with patients, victims of sexual violence, and even with the staff) and a radio operator for the weekends (we stay in contact with the cars by HF and VHF radio). We are in the final stages of recruiting a maintenance person and a mechanic. We have just started the process for a guard (148 candidates for 1 post!) and for a pharmacy manager. And tomorrow, we start the process for someone to coordinate all our activities concerning violence (sexual violence, armed aggression, etc.). Recruiting is managed directly by me, to protect our national staff. Unemployment here is very high, and friends, family members, and others in the community would put enormous pressure (physical, monetary or both) on a national staff member to be hired. And it is also unfair to put national staff members in a position where they could be tempted to take bribes in exchange for influence in the hiring process.
Our head of mission just returned from the semi-annual meeting in Paris, concerning our directions for the coming year. No big changes. We will continue to work in the hospital in Rutshuru, where we send all the surgical patients in this area. We have 3 surgical teams, and will be adding a 4th team to cut down on the hours these people put in. And we continue with Nyanzale, a health center in a zone which changes hands between the different factions of conflict very often. Up north around Kayna, the programme changes every week, with sporadic fighting breaking out here, then there. So we are modifying the program to give us more flexibility in getting to the areas where we are needed, when we are needed. Other than that, we will continue to follow the situation, opening where we have to. We are sending a team to south of here tomorrow to help with an outbreak of cholera. Already this year, we have had 13 temporary programs of this type, and that will continue.
That puts quite a bit of pressure on the staff, so from time to time, we try to lighten up. It had been a long time since we have had a staff party, so we had one this past weekend. A lot of the staffs who had just been let go from Kabizo were there! No one got drunk enough to be really obnoxious (not always the case). And, seeing how the party was on the day of Halloween, I just had to play the idiot.
Some of the staff really thought that I had been attacked when I showed up. I swear that someday, I will grow up. But don’t hold your breath.
But with the closing of Kabizo, and the down-sizing of the Kayna project, I should have some more time to concentrate on the long-term projects. At least, until we open up a few more sites.
Here in Goma, we are doing a lot of recruiting. We just hired a psychologist (to work with patients, victims of sexual violence, and even with the staff) and a radio operator for the weekends (we stay in contact with the cars by HF and VHF radio). We are in the final stages of recruiting a maintenance person and a mechanic. We have just started the process for a guard (148 candidates for 1 post!) and for a pharmacy manager. And tomorrow, we start the process for someone to coordinate all our activities concerning violence (sexual violence, armed aggression, etc.). Recruiting is managed directly by me, to protect our national staff. Unemployment here is very high, and friends, family members, and others in the community would put enormous pressure (physical, monetary or both) on a national staff member to be hired. And it is also unfair to put national staff members in a position where they could be tempted to take bribes in exchange for influence in the hiring process.
Our head of mission just returned from the semi-annual meeting in Paris, concerning our directions for the coming year. No big changes. We will continue to work in the hospital in Rutshuru, where we send all the surgical patients in this area. We have 3 surgical teams, and will be adding a 4th team to cut down on the hours these people put in. And we continue with Nyanzale, a health center in a zone which changes hands between the different factions of conflict very often. Up north around Kayna, the programme changes every week, with sporadic fighting breaking out here, then there. So we are modifying the program to give us more flexibility in getting to the areas where we are needed, when we are needed. Other than that, we will continue to follow the situation, opening where we have to. We are sending a team to south of here tomorrow to help with an outbreak of cholera. Already this year, we have had 13 temporary programs of this type, and that will continue.
That puts quite a bit of pressure on the staff, so from time to time, we try to lighten up. It had been a long time since we have had a staff party, so we had one this past weekend. A lot of the staffs who had just been let go from Kabizo were there! No one got drunk enough to be really obnoxious (not always the case). And, seeing how the party was on the day of Halloween, I just had to play the idiot.
Some of the staff really thought that I had been attacked when I showed up. I swear that someday, I will grow up. But don’t hold your breath.
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