UNICEF grants US $10,000 of tools for refuse collection

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has donated US $10,000 of tools for refuse collection to the Second District of Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic, Radio Centrafrique reported. At the ceremony on Thursday during which the donation was made, the UNICEF official in charge of health and nutritional programmes in the country, Dr Eugene Kpizingui, said the refuse clearance effort by the neighbourhood residents would help reduce infant and maternal mortality caused by a dirty environment. Receiving the shovels, wheelbarrows, boots, pickaxes, machetes and carts, the mayor of the city's Second District, Fabien Rekiyen, called on NGOs operating in the area district and the residents to begin clearing refuse from public places. Before granting the tools, UNICEF organised information seminars to local leaders, NGOs and the youth on the danger of refuse near their homes. "The day all the eight districts of Bangui make efforts to achieve self-development, Bangui will recover its name of Bangui la Coquette," Rekiyen said. Bangui was called 'La Coquette' (The Beautiful) in the 1970s under self-styled Emperor Jean Bedel Bokassa. The Second District, close to the city centre, is among the dirtiest of the eight in the capital. Residents regularly throw their household refuse into ditches and onto the streets, blocking drains, causing stagnant water which is a breading ground for mosquitoes. UNICEF’s donation comes less than two weeks after the French development agency, Agence Francaise de Developpement, donated $4.2 million for water drainage and road repair in four Bangui's neighbourhoods. The Yapele and Bakongo neighbourhoods, which are to benefit from the programme, are in the Second District. Meanwhile, Radio Centrafrique has reported that health and administrative authorities in the southwestern province of Lobaye have started a mass public information campaign on immunisation drives from 3 to 5 November and 2 to 5 December. Quoting the chief medical officer in Lobaye, Dr. D'Aquin Koyadegue, the radio said children under five years old would be vaccinated against tuberculosis, diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, measles and yellow fever. Unlike the health system in the war-affected north and centre of the CAR, health facilities in Lobaye were not destroyed during the October 2002 to March 2003 war. Children in the north were last immunised when the war started.