World Vision UK have been working in the East Democratic Republic of Congo since the violence escalated last year. In response, World Vision provided medicines to four health centres and a hospital, helping 10,000 people to receive free treatment as the area feels the full impact of the war.
The number of people receiving life-saving assistance in these centres has tripled due to people being too poor to pay for medical care. World Vision has been providing quinine, paracetemol to reduce fever, medication for rehydration and a drug which helps to prevent malaria.
Malaria is the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) most common killer disease, with one in five children not making their 5th birthday because of it. With World Malaria Day 2009 planned for25th April, the world is reminded that it only has two years to meet the 2010 targets for delivering affordable protection and treatment to all people at risk of malaria.
Anna Ridout works for World Vision in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and below is a short diary from the frontline –
Deux-Anges’s mother and father do not make much more than $20 to $30 dollars per month selling small items such as soap or sugar along the sides of Goma’s roads in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Living in the poorest slum in of the provincial capital, Ndoole Bamyere cannot afford for any of her four children to fall sick. So when Deux-Anges became weak with high fever on Friday, Ndoole waited until her temperature was dangerously high before bringing her to the local health centre.
Five-year-old Deux-Anges is now sitting up in bed and beaming after she received a course of quinine by infusion – a treatment which cost her mother the family’s monthly income. Many families cannot prevent malaria due to poverty as they are put off coming for treatment as they cannot afford it. With severe cases, delaying treatment can be fatal.
Malaria infections are treated through the use of anti-malarial drugs, but the treatment is expensive. The liquid quinine and the consultation fees for the doctor will cost Deux-Anges’s family around $25. Other more effective treatments are usually too expensive for the average Congolese.
Ndoole has only five dollars to pay the health centre today. ‘If I were to bring all the money now,’ she said, ‘we wouldn’t eat or save anything.’
The health centre allows her to pay in small installments, as they did the last time Deux-Anges was sick. Her mother tells me she gets malaria often. This year she has been admitted for treatment three times. Deux-Anges and her family need a sustainable solution to the high cost of medical treatment for the endemic disease. They need preventative and curative care they can access freely, without cost.
As governments, aid agencies and campaigners consider fresh ways to tackle the disease, and assess progress towards global goals, poverty continues to mean families of children like Deux-Anges struggle to afford the most basic of care. So easily preventable, so simply treated – it makes the call for action next week all the more urgent.
