Doctors Without Borders, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), has called on relevant authorities in Mozambique to ensure that medicines and medical supplies are imported without bureaucratic delays.
The humanitarian organisation made the call following reports that many people in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province are now extremely vulnerable due to displacement and a lack of access to medical care.
A recent surge in violence in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province has displaced thousands of people already affected by five years of conflict.
Also, the country is currently at great risk of extreme weather events, with an annual tropical storm cycle that leaves people with little time to recover between storms.
Local authorities, it was gathered, have reported more than 20 attacks on four villages, with 2,800 homes damaged or destroyed by fire.
‘Violent attacks and ongoing insecurity in several districts of central Cabo Delgado have driven thousands of people from their homes with nothing but what they can carry, at the very moment the cyclone and rainy season is setting in’, Head of MSF’s Emergency Unit, Raphael Veicht, said.
‘This is a very dangerous combination. Our teams are responding to the new waves of forced displacement by providing people with basic health care as well as much-needed household and shelter items. We are extremely concerned about the protection of civilians within this acute and escalating conflict’.
Cabo Delgado, one of Mozambique’s poorest regions, has been embroiled in a violent insurgency waged by the Ahlu-Sunna Wa-Jama’a (ASWJ) since 2017.
Data from Crisis Group shows that the conflict has claimed nearly 3,000 lives, displaced hundreds of thousands and severely impacted health, water, and shelter facilities and access to food in the region.
‘Each day, our team provided more than 200 medical consultations, and we treated more than 2,000 patients in a single week’, MSF’s Project Coordinator, Jean-Jacques Mandagot, said in the statement.
The United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) had reported the use of children in armed groups in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province.
Save the Children International (SCI) also reported the ‘beheading of children’ in Cabo Delgado. The humanitarian organisation said children as young as 11 were reportedly being killed in the province.
In March 2021, thousands of people fled into surrounding forest when Islamic State-linked militants launched attacks on the northeastern town of Palma, ransacking buildings and killing civilians.
According to the World Food Programme (WFP), the insurgency in northern Mozambique has left at least 730,000 people in Cabo Delgado with no access to their lands and no means of livelihood.
Source: MSF
Photo source: MSF
