Humanitarian bodies fear shortage of medicines

A joint committee comprising UN agencies, non-governmental organisations, and the government of Central African Republic has expressed concern that hospitals may run out of medicines unless emergency measures are taken immediately. "The cost of the immediate needs in vaccines is 90,000 dollars," Aboudou Karimou Adjibade, a representative from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), told committee members on Friday. He added that UNICEF was trying to raise the money with its partners to help victims of the 25 to 31 October invasion of the capital by former soldiers. A Health subcommittee - comprising the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the CAR Red Cross society - announced that hospitals and health centres in the country's northern provinces were about to run out of medicines, and that supplies of anti-tuberculosis drugs had already finished. It added that the Red Cross had begun exhuming and reburying corpses, since receiving the necessary materials such as disinfectants and protective gloves. The World Food Programme's priority, Country Director David Bulman said, was to gain access to zones under rebels control and security during food distributions. "We have 1,800 tones of food in different sites where people took refuge," he said. By 15 November, he added, nine metric tones of food had been distributed at points up to 30 km along the road northeast of Bangui, and up to 22 km on the road north of the city. The food subcommittee - which includes the WFP and Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) - reported that the cattle market, located 13 km from Bangui's centre, had reopened following talks between the government, herders and butchers. It said that the cost of a 75-kg bag of cassava, a staple food, had increased from 9,000 francs CFA to 12,500 francs (US $13.76 to $19.12), an increase of 39%. The subcommittee in charge of providing psychological support to rape victims, has recruited four local psychologists. The head of the human rights section of the UN Peace-building Office (BONUCA), Mamadi Diakite, added that the human rights subcommittee would make the protection of witnessed of rights violations its priority. Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation in zones under rebel control remains unknown, as there is no access to these areas.