International Activity Report 2003
Central African Republic

International staff: 7 National staff: 44 MSF has been working in Central African Republic since 1997

Over the last year, work in Central African Republic has focused on emergency response in the wake of an attempted coup d'état, and on a new sleeping sickness program begun in the country's southeast. After the attempted coup catapulted the country into civil war in October 2002 and divided the country into two parts, MSF intervened immediately to assist the injured and displaced. MSF supplied medicines and material to a hospital and several health centers in Bangui and the surrounding province, supported a therapeutic feeding center in Bangui's pediatric hospital, and treated sick and injured people via mobile clinics in the southern part of the country. MSF has also assisted people from Central African Republic who have fled the fighting for refuge in transit camps just over the border in Chad. MSF set up an epidemiological surveillance system throughout the country and opened an of. ce in Bangui to assist more than 300 victims of sexual violence. MSF continues to respond to epidemics of diseases such as meningitis, hemorrhagic viral fever, measles and hepatitis E. A maternal health program in Bangui ended in October 2002.