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Access to healthcare and population movements in the northwestern CAR and southern Chad

Over 60,000 people fled from their homes between the end of December 2017 and the beginning of 2018 to seek refuge in Paoua, a town in the Ouham Pendé region in the northwest of CAR, after fighting erupted between two armed groups, Revolution and Justice and the National Movement for the Liberation of Central African Republic. The fighting was accompanied by widespread abuse. A small town of around 20,000 inhabitants, the population of Paoua quadrupled with the arrival of huge numbers of displaced people. As there is a relative lull in the fighting, most of the displaced have begun leaving Paoua to go back to their villages since June 2018. However, not everyone is making their way home. A hundred or so kilometres away on the other side of the River Pendé there are still over 20,000 people who fled the same violent events and took refuge in Eastern Logone in southern Chad: they are still not planning to go back.

In addition to its medical program in Paoua General Hospital and health center, Médecins Sans Frontières has started providing support to health centres in CAR as people return to Pougol, Béboura and Gouzé and other villages and to health centres in Chad in Békan and Bégoné near the border. The organisation has set up a 20-beds stabilisation unit for children under the age of five years in Békan health center as the combination of the rainy season and seasonal increase in malaria makes it particularly difficult to timely access secondary medical care for the affected children.

MSFSTO25144

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