As the Tongolo project for survivors of sexual violence in Bangui commemorates five years, MSF is witness to a growing demand for services by the population and calls for an earlier arrival of patients and more support from other actors to ensure access to justice and socio-economic assistance.
Since the admission of the first patient on December 18, 2017, MSF has seen an average of 2,540 patients per year at Tongolo, the majority coming from the capital but many also from other provinces of the Central African Republic (CAR), thanks to an extensive network of health promoters and close collaboration with the Ministry of Health and other organizations for referrals.
During the five years of the project, MSF teams treated 12,649 survivors of sexual violence, including 8,978 women (92.8% of the total), 856 men (7.1%) and 4,778 minors (38.9%). About 50% of the survivors knew their aggressor, either from the community or from the family, but there in 40% of the cases that aggressions were perpetrated by armed actors, a proportion that generally increases during peaks of conflict in the country.