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Report from
MSF press release May 2002
LGVN Humanitarian news
Angola
... Civilians in Severe
Nutritional Distress in Chipindo.
- Report from MSF press release.
Emergency
Relief Operation Launched Luanda/New York, May 3, 2002
The international
medical relief organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans
Frontières (MSF) began an emergency feeding and medical program
in Chipindo, in the province of Huila in Angola to come to the rescue
of 18,000 people, who had been isolated there with inadequate food
supplies.
On the morning
of May 2, a ten-person medical and logistical team left MSF's mission
at Caala with two trucks full of fortified food and medical emergency
equipment. The first delivery was distributed immediately to children
under 10. A therapeutic feeding center and health center was also
opened to treat the most severely malnourished and ill—in particular
the children.
The situation
in Chipindo is dramatic. During its exploratory medical mission
the MSF team discovered mortality figures as high as 6.1/10,000/day
for children under 5 and 4.5/10,000/day for the population in general.
These figures are well above the emergency threshold of 1/10,000/day.
"We have seen hardly any little children under 5. Lots of them have
already died," says Mercedes Tataï, MSF's medical emergency coordinator.
"A whole hill has been covered with fresh graves since September."
A rapid nutritional evaluation of children shows 57% global malnutrition
and 35% severely malnourished. The MSF team also came across significant
numbers of malnourished adults and adolescents.
A dozen children
in immediate need of care were taken to the MSF hospital in Caala.
The 18,000 civilians were moved from their homes to Chipindo between
September and March by Angolan government forces. They have had
no access since to their farmland or to humanitarian and food aid.
After surviving three years of war, violence, looting, and isolation,
these people are now in immediate danger of dying. Chipindo is the
fourth of these emergency situations that MSF has come across since
it was able to start exploring parts of the provinces of Huambo,
Huila, and Bie, which were inaccessible until the cease-fire at
the beginning of last month.
In the other
provinces where MSF is working, the teams are seeing similar phenomena.
Without an immediate relief effort by the authorities and the international
humanitarian agencies, MSF fears that the disaster, which has already
killed thousands of people, will claim tens of thousand more.
MSF has been
working in Angola since 1983 and has about 100 international and
more than 1,000 national staff working in 11 of the 18 provinces
of the country.
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