A cholera outbreak in a sprawling refugee camp has spread to eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DR Congo) provincial capital of Goma, increasing fears of an epidemic amid a tense standoff between government troops and rebels, officials said.
Cholera cases rose slightly on Monday in the towns of Goma and Kibati, with at least 90 known cases and six new admissions overnight. Officials with Doctors Without Borders said the cases they were treating were well-contained. Only four new ones were reported at the group’s clinic in Kibati camp.
But dozens of people have died of cholera in recent weeks elsewhere in eastern DR Congo. Doctors also fear an epidemic behind rebel lines, where access has been limited by fighting and rebels have driven tens of thousands of people from camps where outbreaks had been contained.
Also, refugee conditions in many places continue to worsen.
In an unofficial refugee camp set up in Goma for park rangers and their families, about 900 people crowded into plastic tents — some smaller than a sport utility vehicle — and hungrily eyed six heavy sacks of beans donated by an international Catholic charity.
Camp director Christian Shamavu was responsible for safeguarding gorillas and elephants as a ranger at Virunga National Park until a month ago.
“It’s easier to protect gorillas and elephants than people,” Shamavu said on Monday. “Because the animals don’t have sickness and have to go the hospital.”
Families live less than 1m apart from each other, sharing five makeshift showers and scrabbling in the damp dirt to find space to cook, wash clothes and entertain the children.
In the last month, 33 people in the camp have contracted cholera.
Sixty have contracted malaria. But families keep trickling in to take shelter from the rebels that now hold the park.
“We usually get a lot of new cases of cholera one, two days after the big rains,” Shamavu said, as heavy drops began pelting from the dark skies.
The humanitarian crisis has exploded since rebel leader Laurent Nkunda launched an offensive on Aug. 28, stopping his forces at the gates of Goma before declaring a ceasefire. Retreating Congolese troops and rebels sent the population fleeing for their lives and sporadic clashes have broken out since then.
Thousands of refugees are packed into camps or sleeping out in the open, scrambling for washing and cooking water. Some 50,000 refugees have crowded around Kibati, some taken into log cabins by villagers, others living in tents or hastily built huts.
Weekend clashes between rebels and soldiers ignited concern that patients could scatter and launch an epidemic. But it appears unlikely that a EU force will come to help stem the fighting. France failed to secure support on Monday from other EU countries for sending a 1,500-strong EU battlegroup to eastern DR Congo to bolster UN peacekeepers.
The fighting in eastern DR Congo is fueled by ethnic hatred left over from the 1994 slaughter of at least 500,000 Tutsis in Rwanda. Nkunda says he is fighting to protect minority Tutsis from Rwandan Hutu militants who participated in the genocide before fleeing to DR Congo.
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
RSS