Red Cross says relief priority is feeding Monrovia

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) believes the immediate priority in Liberia is to feed and provide adequate shelter for up to 1.5 million people – half the country’s population – in the capital Monrovia. Jordi Raich, the ICRC’s deputy head of delegation in Liberia, told IRIN in an interview that he reckoned there were no more than 250,000 people living rough in Monrovia after being displaced from their homes by three rebel assaults on the city since the beginning of June. About half of these had previously been living in camps for displaced people on the outskirts of the city, while half were city residents who had fled their homes after rebels of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebel movement battled their way into the northwestern suburbs. His estimate of the number of displaced was far lower than those of some other relief organisations. The United Nations has estimated the number of displaced at up to 450,000. However, Raich told IRIN that virtually the entire population of Monrovia was in need of humanitarian assistance. “In this city it is as hard for a resident as for an IDP (internally displaced person) to find food and water. The only difference is that the residents are likely to have more decent shelter,” he said. Over the weekend, relief agencies began distributing some of the 2,500 tonnes of UN World Food Programme (WFP) maize meal left in the port. But earlier in the week, massive looting of other WFP food stocks at warehouses in the port by rebel fighters and thousands of civilians assured a de facto distribution of food to the entire population which sent the price of rice in street markets tumbling. Relief workers said this had taken the edge off the crisis for many families. The first WFP food ship is due into Monrovia, whose port was handed over to Nigerian peacekeepers on Thursday 16 August. There has not been a proper census in Liberia for 34 years, but Raich, who has been working in the country since April, estimated there were “1.5 million people easily” in Monrovia. The ICRC sent exploratory teams on Friday to Tubmanburg, a LURD military base about 68 km northwest of Monrovia, and Buchanan, Liberia’s second city, 120 km southeast of the capital. Buchanan is occupied by another rebel group, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL). Raich said the ICRC team found it to be a “ghost town,” with deserted streets and closed up shops where the situation was still very tense. He expressed concern about the welfare of 6000 to 7,000 displaced people who had sought refuge at the Roman Catholic mission there. Tubmanburg, on the other hand, was more relaxed and there was plenty of food and trade goods available, much of it looted from Monrovia. “The feeling was that there was more food available than there is here,” Raich said. The ICRC delegate said the top priority of relief agencies should be to resume food distribution in the capital, but this should be done in such a way as to attract displaced people crowding the city centre back to their original homes in the suburbs and in camps for displaced people on the outskirts of the city. “We have to empty the city in order to help them,” Raich said, recommending that tarpaulins to rebuild shelters and food rations should be distributed in the camps around the edge of Monrovia in order to act as a magnet. He noted that clean water, proper sanitation and other facilities were available to help people at these camps and warned that handing out food to displaced people in the rubbish-strewn and overcrowded city centre would simply encourage them to stay there. “What we would like to do is to restart distribution in the camps, starting with tarpaulins…, bringing in food and distributing it will be essential, but it will also be essential to set up a distribution strategy,” the ICRC delegate stressed. However, not all relief agencies agree. Karen Goodman Jones, acting country manager of the British medical charity Merlin, said it would be irresponsible to force displaced people to move out of the city centre if their security could not yet be guaranteed in the camps. Even within Monrovia, which is now nominally under the control of Nigerian and US peacekeeping troops, gun-toting government soldiers and militiamen continued to be seen on the streets on Sunday, while in the western suburbs, pick-up trucks and battered yellow taxis packed with LURD fighters continued to cruise around freely. Goodman Jones said: “I do not believe you should force people to move when you cannot guarantee their security. We have to guarantee their security before you can expect them to go back. That is just a basic.” Raich said the medical emergency in Monrovia had been brought under control and that food shortages, while serious, were not yet critical. “Malnutrition is on the rise, that is true, so it’s a worrying situation, but at least we are not facing mass starvation,” the ICRC delegate said. “Food must come soon, especially rice,” he added, noting that rice was the staple food of Liberians and they were reluctant to eat maize meal, one of the few foods that is still available for distribution. Goodman Jones at Merlin and a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) doctor at a hospital in Monrovia also reported that child malnutrition was increasing, but neither they nor Raich felt able to estimate just how high malnutrition rates were. The MSF doctor, who asked not to be named, said the number of severely malnourished children admitted to his hospital had doubled in recent weeks to about four or five a day. Raich said the medical emergency in Monrovia had been contained, cholera had been brought under control and there was no need to send in a hospital ship, as proposed by Jacques Klein, the UN special envoy to Liberia, to cope to deal with cases of complicated surgery. He said the ICRC-run John F Kennedy hospital in Monrovia no longer suffered from overcrowding. He stressed that it was able to refer non-surgical cases to St Joseph’s Roman Catholic hospital, clinics run by Medecins Sans Frontieres and Merlin and therapeutic feeding centres for children run by Action Against Hunger. “Up to now in Monrovia it has been difficult, but it has been pretty successful,” the ICRC delegate said. “ A mercy ship now is not the main priority, although it could have been a few weeks ago.” Raich said that although fighting in Monrovia stopped shortly after the first Nigerian peacekeeping troops landed in Liberia on August 4, John F Kennedy, Monrovia’s main hospital, was still treating several people daily for bullet wounds sustained as a result of looting by gunmen who still roamed the streets freely. At one time, MSF had been reporting more than 300 new cholera cases per week, but Raich said the situation had now stabilised. “I think it has decreased and definitely we never reached the epidemic that everyone was predicting,” he said. Goodman Jones of Merlin, which runs a dozen healthcare clinics across Monrovia, agreed. “The numbers still are not what people expected,” she told IRIN. “It just didn’t become the epidemic that everyone thought was coming.” The MSF doctor said the number of new cholera cases peaked around mid-July, but had then diminished, for no apparent reason. “My subjective feeling is that the peak of the cholera epidemic has passed and that it’s not one of the main needs right now,” he said. A precarious peace has held in tense and jumpy Monrovia for nearly two weeks, the UN has been flying back international staff to relaunch UN relief operations and and several planes now arrive daily carrying relief supplies for different agencies. On Saturday, UNICEF alone flew in 59 tonnes of supplies from Denmark, including emergency health kits, high protein biscuits and therapeutic milk, soap, water bladders and oral rehydration salts. [ENDS]