MONUSCO provides support for setting up mobile clinic on internally displaced sites in Katanika. Photo MONUSCO/Francois-Xavier MYBE
Kalemie, 19 June 2018 – Canadian Ambassador, Nicolas Simard inaugurated a mobile clinic in the displaced site at Katanika, 7 km away from southern Kalemie, in the Tanganyika province, in a ceremony attended by provincial government’s officials and the Representative of the Swedish Embassy in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The project funded by the United Nations Population Funds (UNFPA) received support from MONUSCO and other partners: WFP and FAO.
The mobile Clinic initiative in the Katanika dated last January, during a joint visit organized on the site by the UN Deputy Special Representative and Humanitarian Coordinator, Kim Bolduc, and Representatives of the different humanitarian agencies active on the ground, including Swedish and Canadian Ambassadors. Those actors received firsthand information about women’s situation in the internally displaced camps.
The inauguration ceremony for the mobile clinic came in six months after the visit to urgently respond to the needs expressed by the pregnant women living in the sites.
The chief medical doctor of the provincial health division, Dr Benjamin Maloba reported only 27% medically assisted childbirth, 172 maternal death including 119 in the community and a rate of maternal mortality of 1217 deaths for 100 000 live births. Mother’s health thus remains a major concern for the Tanganyika province.
Medical assistance to pregnant women and other women with gynecological problems is a serious issue due to the vulnerable conditions in which are several displaced women, following the Twa-Bantou inter-communal conflict having affected the province.
The Katanika site currently numbers 612 pregnant women. Thirty women had delivered in the mobile Maternity hospital prior to the inauguration ceremony.
Mobile Clinic proves to be an urgent response to the child delivering women. It will benefit hundreds more women living in the vicinity of the site.
The Tanganyika provincial Governor, Richard Ngoy Kitangala, expressed the wish to see the gender-friendly actions be replicated to other sites for the purposes of visibility.
The Katanika mobile clinic is provided with modern equipment. Canadian Ambassador, Nicolas Simard, for his part that the result could not be achieved without the contributions made by various partners.
FAO handed out agricultural kits to the pregnant women who benefited from the project.
MONUSCO office in Kalemie, through its Engineering section provided technical support which helped to set up the mobile Maternity at the heart of the internally displaced site in Katanika.