- Title: ZAIRE/RWAANDA: OVERSEAS AID IMPROVES LIFE OF RWANDAN REFUGEES
- Date: 1st August 1994
- Summary: VARIOUS LOCATIONS, NEAR ZAIRE/RWANDA BORDER; GOMA AND KITALE CAMP, ZAIRE (AUGUST 1, 1994) VARIOUS LOCATIONS 1. GV MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES CLINIC IN RUBAVU 0.4 2. GV MEDICAL WORKERS CHECKING THEIR GLOVES 0.8 3. GVS INTERIOR OF CLINIC AND PATIENTS LYING DOWN 0.16 4. SCU MSF WORKER JACQUES MUSTAR SAYING HE HAS A LOT
- Embargoed: 16th August 1994 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: VARIOUS LOCATIONS, NEAR ZAIRE/RWANDA BORDER; GOMA AND KITALE CAMP,ZAIRE
- City:
- Country: Rwanda
- Reuters ID: LVA6WWQHE7S6NI69IIVYDUP4BUH0
- Story Text: Way stations and clinics were set up on Monday (August 1) on roads leading from Zaire into Rwanda to help those Rwandan refugees attempting to return home.
Pressure has increased on aid agencies to encourage as many Rwandans as possible to leave the packed refugee camps, where disease and hunger are acute, and make the journey back to their homeland.
Emergency workers said they are afraid dysentery was likely to spread among the 1.2 million Rwandans packed into filthy refugee camps unless thousands more latrines were dug, and soap and water made available.
Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) aid worker Jacques Mustar said they had seen plenty of dysentery and dehydration cases, and were prepared for, and expecting, cholera cases.
A dysentery outbreak could claim 20,000 to 40,000 lives among the refugees camped around the border of Zaire with Rwanda, according to a U.N. specialist in contagious diseases in Goma.
Relief workers said cholera, measles, malaria and meningitis were also dangers in the camps around Goma in Zaire.
Elizabeth Dole, president of the United States (U.S.) Red Cross and wife of senator Robert Dole, continued her tour of refugee centres and orphanages in Zaire on Monday, as international operations to help almost a million Rwandans increased.
She visited children at the Ndosho orphanage as part of her assessment, and said the U.S. Red Cross would do everything possible to alleviate the suffering.
On Monday, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Sadako Ogata arrived at Kitale camp, near Zaire's border with Rwanda, to assess improvements made, visit the sick being treated in the tent hospital, and see supplies of purified water arriving.
Oxfam workers were busy laying a pipeline which would distribute water throughout the camp.
Aid from the United States was also being distributed in the camp on Monday morning.
U.N. officials in the refugee camps said that the number of reported cases of cholera was continuing to rise but the percentage of those who died appeared to be decreasing.
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