MSF staff are now able to reach areas in Angola where international aid has not been available for years. Teams are discovering the levels of neglect and malnutrition are severe.
Video coverage:
Increasing media attention is being given to the situation being confronted in Angola, where hundreds of thousands of civilians are suffering the results of 27 years of civil war where food was used as a weapon. Since the cease fire of early April, 2002, pockets of populations, all suffering severe rates of malnutrition, are surfacing throughout the country.
September 11, 2002 - Forgotten people of Mavinga
In the second feature article on Mavinga, Angola, James Nichols reports on the wave of people heading to Mavinga in search of food. Despite repeated attempts by MSF to raise awareness of the plight of the people there, international attention remains minimal.
September 29 - MSF vaccinates 3,700 children against measles in Luau, Angola
The situation is so grave, and the lack of food so severe, that handicapped people, with prostheses and crutches, have tried to walk the 50 kilometers in the hope of finding food.
With peace now being brokered in Angola after the 27 year civil war, the people once trapped in conflict areas - both unable to receive aid or move to areas where international aid was available - are being seen for the first time in years. MSF teams are finding the levels of malnutrition and neglect are enormously high, with severe malnutrition reaching 30% in places. These people, trapped in 'grey zones' have not seen international aid since 1998.
MSF has maintained an unprecedented degree of public attention to the disaster, detailing the severity and scope of the malnutrition levels, including the following chronological list of press releases.
Children are particularly vulnerable and MSF staff have found children who weigh less than 70% of what their standard weight should be. This means a child that should weigh 20kg can weigh as little as 6kg. Children in their first five years are the most vulnerable.
Some families arriving from the 'grey zones' have had such levels of malnutrition that every one of their children have been admitted to a therapeutic feeding centres (TFCs). A TFC is the more serious feeding programme offered by MSF where the patient must be kept and monitored by MSF to ensure effective treatment.
In the initial wave of people who were able to reach the MSF clinics, facilities that were initially intended for 150 children increased its capacity to care for over 400. Along with malnutrition, opportunistic infections were taking hold with some of these children, with many of them suffering from tuberculosis as well.
As soon as MSF staff saw the predicament of the people from the 'grey zones', staff were sent to the areas to bring aid and assess the situation. Teams were sent to Ngove (located between Kaala and Bunjei) and then on to Bunjei to evaluate the situation.
This is an unfolding emergency and MSF is raising international awareness with frequent information from the field.
Along with the press releases and reports shown in the column on the right, additional information can be found in the collection of testimonies from Angolan displaced and a journal from an MSF staff member working in the emergency below.
June 4 - Diary from the Angola famine
MSF nurse and project co-ordinator, Els Adams, kept a personal diary of her work with the Angolan population in and around Malange. MSF staff there are working amidst one of the worst famines seen in Africa in the past ten years.
Increasing media attention is being given to the situation being confronted in Angola, where hundreds of thousands of civilians are suffering the results of 27 years of civil war where food was used as a weapon. Since the cease fire of early April, 2002, pockets of populations, all suffering severe rates of malnutrition, are surfacing throughout the country.
