Health minister confirms blockage of humanitarian supplies

Some 50 mt of emergency humanitarian aid belonging for the most part to international relief NGO Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) have been blocked since arrival in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) by the local administration, MSF project director Alain Decoux has announced.

DRC Health Minister Mashako Mamba confirmed that this was the case, but blamed it on people who were not following proper procedure.

"We are informed of the situation and we are in the process of trying to identify the individuals responsible for causing the unnecessary blockage of this assistance. Punitive action will follow, because MSF has all of its documents in order," Mashako said.

Part of the 50 mt of supplies has been detained at the N'djili airport outside of the capital, Kinshasa, while another part has been detained at the port of Matadi in Bas-Congo Province.

"All of our programmes are suffering from supply shortages," Decoux told a news conference. "The most serious shortages in supplies, the lack of which could have dire consequences, include anti-malarial medication, HIV test kits and medicines which are indispensable for the care of infected people."

The blockage of relief supplies has affected about one dozen international NGOs, and resulted from a ministerial oversight that led to the suspension of importation authorisations for humanitarian NGOs.

Mashako said that although MSF had all necessary authorisations for its supplies, administrative authorities were nevertheless refusing to release them until the ministerial oversight was rectified.