Emergency medical programme extended for 6 months

The government of the Central African Republic (CAR) has authorised a six-month extension of an EC-funded emergency medical programme in the northwestern war-affected provinces of Ouham and Ouham Pende, state-owned Radio Centrafrique reported. Health Minister Nestor Mali made the announcement on Wednesday after a meeting in the capital, Bangui, with a visiting EC team and a delegation of the EC Humanitarian Office (ECHO). The Brussels-based ECHO humanitarian aid desk officer, Francois Goemans, told IRIN on Wednesday that the programme would cost €470,000 (US $589,000) and would be implemented until 30 June by an Italian charity, Cooperazione Internazionale (Coopi). Goemans and his delegation ended a four-day assessment mission in Ouham and Ouham Pende provinces on Thursday. Like the previous €1.78 million ($2.23 million) programme that ended in December 2003, the new one focuses on Ouham and Ouham Pende, where most of the fighting took place during a six-month civil war that ended in March 2003. The fighting badly affected all the social, medical, administrative, educational and other community structures in the two areas. Unlike the initial medical programme, Nali said, this time around, patients would have to pay for consultations and drugs, as this would enable the facilities to maintain their medicine stocks. Coopi representative Massimiliano Pedretti told IRIN on Wednesday that talks were still underway on the payment issue. "We are negotiating with the Health Ministry so that drug prices may not be over 50 percent of the pre-war prices," Pedretti said. He added the residents of the two provinces had not recovered from the consequences of the civil war. Thousands of people fled their homes during the fighting and lost the two planting seasons that followed either because they were in hiding or because they had no seeds, which annihilated most families' purchasing power. The extension of the medical programme comes weeks after another NGO, the Association des Oeuvres Medicales des Eglises pour la Sante en Centrafrique (Assomesca), appealed for the extension of its emergency programme in eight eastern provinces. Assomesca's €700,000 ($877,000) medical programme ended in December 2003 and the charity appealed to donors in January for its extension. The programme was supported by the UN Children's Fund, ECHO, French-based Secours Catholique and US-based Catholic Relief Service. While health facilities in the northwest were looted and vandalised during the war, those in the east ran out drugs as they were cut off from Bangui, from where they received their supplies. Radio Centrafrique also quoted Nali as saying that the government would reopen and restock provincial drug supply centres in the country's 16 provinces.