Congo

  MSF nurse Sedi Mbelani, stands inside the admission ward of the nutrition centre at the MSF-run Madaoua hospital, in southern Niger. Photo: MSF     Malnutrition is on the rise across the Sahel region of West Africa, a huge area that includes eight countries:Burkina Faso, Chad, Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, Mali, Mauritania and Senegal. MSF has nutrition programmes in most of these countries, and is currently conducting numerous assessments as well as scaling up its nutrition programmes. Sedi Mbelani, originally from Congo Brazzaville but currently living in South Africa, recently returned from a 9-month contract as a nurse with MSF in Niger. Here she shares her experience...

MSF demands that all parties to the conflict respect medical structures   The medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) deplores a serious incident that happened in the isolated village of Katanga in the region of Hauts Plateaux, South Kivu. On Thursday 11th March, armed soldiers from the Congolese Army (FARDC - Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo) entered the hospital of Katanga, where an MSF surgical team had been providing emergency medical care to wounded people. Despite MSF’s protests and negotiations, the Congolese soldiers, after harassing the wounded patients, left the hospital one day later with four of them...

Approximately 110,000 people from the Equateur region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are still gathered on the Congo-Brazzaville side of the Ubangi River. For now, their prospect of returning home is dim, but the health and humanitarian situation has barely improved in recent months and could worsen. Below, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) program manager Isabelle Mouniaman discusses the situation:   What is the current situation in Congo-Brazzaville?  Since October, when clashes occurred in the Equateur region of the DRC, the situation has barely changed for the 110,000 people who have sought refuge in an area running north to south along the Ubangi River, in neighboring...

In North Kivu, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, violent conflict persists between government forces and an array of military groups. The frontlines between different armed actors constantly shift, and local people are trapped in the middle – often cut off from medical care. In and around Pinga, an MSF team has been reaching out to populations trapped by the conflict by running mobile clinics via motorbike and providing medical services to people who have no other hope of getting medical care.