ECHO director visits Guinea, Sierra Leone

The director of the European Commission’s humanitarian aid office, ECHO, Costanza Adinolfi, has been visiting Guinea and Sierra Leone to look at efforts being made by international NGOs and UN humanitarian agencies to help refugees, displaced persons and host communities, ECHO reported.

Adinolfi arrived in Guinea on Saturday and travelled to Sierra Leone on Tuesday. On 13 and 14 May she visited the camps of Albadaria, Kountaya and Katkama in southern Guinea, which host Sierra Leonean refugees relocated from border areas plagued by instability in recent months. The camps were recently set up by the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) with the support of ECHO’s partners in Guinea.

The European Commission has earmarked 15.5 million euros this year to help meet the needs of refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs) and host communities in the two countries, with 11 million euros going to Sierra Leone and 4.5 million to Guinea. In both countries the funds are channelled by ECHO through partner organisations.
In Guinea, ECHO’s operational partners, Premiere Urgence, the International Federation of the Red Cross, Action contre la Faim and Enfants Refugies du Monde have been helping to deliver food, supply potable water and provide health care for the target group.

ECHO reported that Adinolfi’s contacts with humanitarian workers and refugees in Guinea gave her a better understanding of their difficulties, needs and expectations.

On Tuesday, she travelled to Kabala in northern Sierra Leone, where she was able to see the work being done since May 1999 by the Belgian chapter of Medecins sans Frontieres. MSF-Belgium in conjunction with the Sierra Leonean Health Ministry has re-established the district health system in Kabala, which comprises a hospital and six clinics.

Her programme in Sierra Leone includes a visit to an IDP camp in Port Loko, north of the capital, Freetown, where ECHO’s operational partners, OXFAM, ACF-France and the International Medical Corps (IMC) have been active.
OXFAM has been providing water and sanitation facilities, while ACF looks after malnourished children and pregnant women in and around Port Loko through its therapeutic feeding centre. According to recent surveys, acute malnutrition affects 1.6 percent of the area’s residents and IDPs, while 10 percent suffer from moderate malnutrition. IMC has been doing basic rehabilitation of the area’s hospital and providing medicines and medical supplies, emergency services and training for medical personnel.

Adinolfi’s programme also includes a visit to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) information centre in Freetown to visualise the efforts which various donors, including the EC, have agreed to deploy to strengthen the coordination and synergy of programmes on the ground.

In both countries, she has been meeting with national and UN officials, as well as representatives of European Union member states.
The EC’s 11-million-euro intervention plan in Sierra Leone has three main strands: integrated assistance for IDPs, working increasingly through their host communities and covering basic needs such as water, sanitation, health care, nutrition and relief supplies; special support to children (including young ex-combatants), war-affected women and amputees; and coordination and operational assistance for humanitarian organisations working in the country.

The humanitarian aid for Guinea is earmarked principally for health care (for both refugees and resident populations); the provision of water/sanitation and of non-food items, including shelter; and support for food distribution to refugees and IDPs.