MSF-Spain to resume work in east

Spanish medical NGO Medicos Sin Fronteras (MSF) will later in June resume its help to victims of sleeping sickness in three eastern towns in the Central African Republic (CAR), an official said on Thursday. "As there is still need, MSF wants to resume that programme," Joan Soler, the MSF representative in the CAR, told IRIN. MSF suspended its eastern operations in September 2002 because of insecurity. It will return to the towns of Zemio, Obo, and Mboki, all a little over 1,000 km east of Bangui, the nation’s capital. The eastern part of the country, she said, was a sleeping sickness endemic zone. MSF’s resumption of work in the east follows the NGOs closure of emergency programmes in the war-affected north. Soler said the NGOs last action in the east in mid-May was the immunisation of 7,000 children against measles. Soler said MSF was now conducting its second HIV tests on 300 women who tested negative three months after they were raped. The women were raped following a failed coup in October 2002 against President Ange-Felix Patasse. Congolese rebels of the Mouvement de Liberation du Congo, who were in CAR to support Patasse, went on a rampage of rape and looting after the coup attempt. Former army chief of staff Francois Bozise finally ousted Patasse on 15 March.