Bleak picture of health concerns, food security

The epidemiological situation in the DRC was “disastrous and more threatening than ever”, with the vast majority of deaths in the country disease-related, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the country, Martin Mogwanja, told a meeting of the Economic and Social Council of the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) last week. The country also had one of the highest infant mortality rates in the region [128 per 1,000 live births in 1998] and the highest maternal mortality rate in the world [estimated at more than 1,100 per 100,000 live births], a UN press release quoted him as saying. In addition, health-specialist agencies such as the WHO, UNICEF and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) received “little or no funding for their operations in the DRC,” Mogwanja added.

Of 1.6 million internally-displaced persons (IDPs) in the country, over half a million were inaccessible and only about a quarter of a million received “substantial and systematic assistance,” he said. The food situation was also precarious, with food insecurity affecting millions of Congolese and the humanitarian response still weak in Equateur, northern Katanga and Kasai due to a lack of safe access, Mogwanja said. At the moment, it often “could not be assumed that helping IDPs to return home was the best option” and aid would now be offered to displaced communities wherever they were found.

The humanitarian community envisaged a dual approach of feeding and nutritional projects, and attempting to restore a minimum producing capacity among IDPs, Mogwanja added. The DRC government had requested UNHCR for assistance with IDPs but, “because of difficult access, the requested assistance was often impossible [to deliver]”, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, added.