Returnees from Pool severely malnourished

The health and nutritional situation of people arriving in Brazzaville from the Pool region is "catastrophic," MSF-France's head of office, Thierry Allafort Duverger, told IRIN on Wednesday. He said about 600 severely malnourished children under five years of age had so far received emergency help at an MSF therapeutic feeding centre opened on 6 May in southern Brazzaville's Makelekele hospital. About 75 percent were suffering from kwashiorkor, he said. A screening effort would undoubtedly identify many more children in urgent need of nutritional assistance in the city, Duverger said, adding that many adults were also malnourished. Meanwhile, an estimated 50,000 of the 200,000 residents of southern Brazzaville's Bacongo and Makelekele districts - all displaced by conflict in December - have recently returned to their homes, some from the Pool region and others from northern Brazzaville, humanitarian sources told IRIN. An estimated 8,000 people remain in displaced centres in northern Brazzaville. Many of the residents displaced by fresh clashes in the Mukundu area of northern Brazzaville last week have since returned to their homes, the sources added. An aid appeal launched by the UN for ROC, announced recently by Humanitarian Coordinator Georg Charpentier, will include support for a volunteer programme to enrol youth militia in employment schemes after they have returned their arms under a government-funded initiative to buy back arms. The appeal is also intended to support the monitoring of events such as the public destruction of weapons.