Medical mission investigates type of diarrhoea in north

A joint medical team of government and NGO officials is in the northern town of Bocaranga, Central African Republic, to investigate cases of a diarrhoeal disease detected by local health services in early July, an official of Medicos Sin Fronteras (MSF-Spain) told IRIN on Monday. The official, who requested anonymity, said the team was made up of a Ministry of Health epidemiologist, a laboratory assistant of the Pasteur Institute and two MSF nurses. He said a medical doctor working in the Bocaranga hospital, supported by Italian NGO Cooperazione Internazionale, raised the alarm on Friday. "After he alerted us we immediately decided to send, on the ground, a joint mission to identify the disease and make laboratory tests," the MSF official said. He said that 15 of the 400 people who had reported to local health facilities with bloody diarrhoea since July had died. But, he said, "Treatment against that disease seems to be efficient." The Pasteur Institute is carrying out laboratory field tests to determine the source and type of diarrhoea that struck Bocaranga, 510 northwest of Bangui, and surrounding villages. The European Community Humanitarian Office and the European Development Fund disbursed 1.78 million euro (US $2.1 million) in May to rehabilitate the health system in the war-affected regions of the north, among them Bocaranga. Bocaranga, a town of some 15,000 people, is in an area that was badly affected by the fighting between government and rebel troops from October 2002 to March 2003. It is the only town in the north and northwest of the country with a medical doctor. Others who fled the fighting have still not returned. Humanitarian NGOs have been calling on the government to send qualified medical personnel to the north, where nurses are reportedly running hospitals. The outbreak of diarrhoea was reported just days after the International Committee of Red Cross announced a $ 2.2-million water programme for towns facing shortages of clean water.