Health care facilities are also targeted by the violence. “On May 2, the war came to the area of Wadda and left behind over 200 burned homes,” said Wade. “The health center we were supporting was looted. Sadly, this was not the first health facility to be targeted. In May alone, at least four other health facilities were reported to have come under attack.”
“The violence is systematically targeting villages and health centers in order to prevent the people who fled from returning,” said MSF field coordinator Benjamin Courlet. “Some people are too terrified to go [to] the health centers that are still functioning in the villages or in the [displacement] camps. Instead [people] stay in the bush, so we have set up mobile clinics to reach them there.”
“They attacked us in broad day light," said Ndjilo Laki Emmanuel, a community leader of Wada. "We ran away in the bush with our families. Then they attacked again a week later. Since then, we sleep in the bush with no food, no shelter, and exposed to all of nature’s hazards. We can’t go back. Our homes were burned down leaving only ashes behind.”
There are more than five million internally displaced people (IDP) in DRC; the second largest number of IDPs in the world. Over the last two decades, more than one million people have been displaced from their homes in Ituri province. “In light of the recent conflict, the priority is to reach those people in immediate need of medical assistance, and then to try and improve their living conditions as much as possible,” says Courlet. “People’s needs are huge and we cannot do everything on our own.”
MSF has provided medical assistance to people in Ituri region since the conflict began. As well as caring for the wounded, MSF teams provide treatment for common but deadly endemic diseases, including malaria, severe respiratory infections, diarrheal disease, and measles in hospitals, health centers, and community health centers in areas where displaced people have settled around Nizi, Drodro, and Angumu. MSF teams also carry out health promotion activities, provide clean water, improve sanitation, and distribute essential relief items. To try and prevent the spread of COVID-19 in Ituri province, MSF teams are conducting community awareness sessions and building isolation and triage wards in general hospitals for suspected COVID-19 patients.
