MSF rushes relief to 18,000 in need

The international medical relief organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has started an emergency feeding and medical programme in Chipindo, in Angola's southern province of Huila, to aid 18,000 isolated people in severe need.

On Thursday a medical and logistical team left MSF's mission at Caala, in Huambo Province, with two trucks full of fortified food and medical emergency equipment. The aid is to be distributed immediately among children under 10.

A therapeutic feeding centre and health centre will also be opened to treat the most severely malnourished and ill – in particular the children, an MSF statement said.

During an exploratory medical mission the MSF team discovered mortality figures as high as 6.1 per 10,000 people a day for children under 5 and 4.5 deaths per 10,000 a day for the population in general. These figures are well above the emergency threshold of 1 death for 10,000 a day.

"We have seen hardly any little children under five. Lots of them had already died," the statement quoted Mercedes Tataï, MSF's medical emergency coordinator as saying. "A whole hill has been covered with fresh graves since September."

A rapid nutritional evaluation of children showed 57 percent global malnutrition and 35 percent severely malnourished. The MSF team also came across significant numbers of malnourished adults and adolescents. A dozen children in immediate need of care have been taken to the MSF hospital in Caala.

The 18,000 civilians were moved from their homes to Chipindo between September and March by Angolan government forces, MSF said. "They have had no access since to their farmland or to humanitarian and food aid. After surviving three years of war, violence, looting and isolation, these people are now in immediate danger of dying," the agency warned.

Chipindo is the fourth emergency situation that MSF has come across since it was able to start exploring parts of the provinces of Huambo, Huila and Bie, which were inaccessible until the ceasefire at the beginning of last month. In the other provinces where MSF is working, the teams are seeing similar phenomena.

"Without an immediate relief effort by the authorities and the international humanitarian agencies, MSF fears that the disaster, which has already killed thousands of people will claim tens of thousand more," the statement said.