Kibirizi
Democratic Republic of Congo
In early March 2023, fighting around Kibirizi in North Kivu forced 150,000 people.
to flee.
Since the resurgence in March 2022 of the conflict involving the M23, the Congolese army and different armed groups, scenes such as these have been increasingly common.
Displaced person Nsabimana Ngurinze
We walked to Kibirizi. The children were exhausted and they were sick. My wife was pregnant, but because of the exhaustion, she miscarried. The war caught up with us in Kibirizi. When we heard the sound of bullets being fired in the town, we fled again. My wife and my kids went in one direction, and me in the other. I don’t know where they are.
Nsabimana Ngurinze found refuge in a church in the town of Kanyabayonga
where MSF teams support a health centre.
ITV Dr PADOUE KABAMBA NAWEJ – MSF medical advisor
Every time we see a patient, we try to find out how their morale is. People are desperate because they’ve lost their homes, they’re not working their fields and so they have literally nothing – no shelter, no food and no access to medical care. All this has an impact on their mental health and I believe people are really badly affected. Although some don’t talk, we know they’re hurting inside because the atrocities are affecting them mentally and physically. They’ve been fleeing for more than a year, they’ve left their fields behind, and some of their children. Some people don’t even know where their children are until today.
600,000 displaced people sheltering in Goma
are crammed into insalubrious camps
rampant with cholera and measles.
Dr Prince Djuma Sarai – MSF Emergency medical coordinator
We see the disparity between the humanitarian relief effort and the extent of needs in the camps. One example is Lushagala camp where over 73,000 people are sheltering. Until now we’ve had 60 cubic metres of water. It means needs are huge, because if you calculate, it comes to less than one litre of water per person [per day].
This is the second time he’s been displaced.
He’s telling us that the first time they were displaced there was plenty of aid. There was MSF, and many other relief organisations came to help them. But in this war, there’s no aid.
We’re going to the displaced persons camp in Rusayo. The camp is a distance from the road.
These people look completely abandoned.
Many people have died in the camp because of the famine. And when they die, they don’t have anywhere to bury their dead.
Cholera is the most common cause of death in the camp. Cholera breaks out because they don’t have [clean] water or latrines.

MSF cholera treatment centre
Bulengo camp

ITV Displaced person Baseme Kanyenyebi
I saw my child had lost all his strength. So that he wouldn’t die, I came to the hospital to get treatment for him. He had diarrhoea and he was vomiting. I said to myself, I have to bring him here. In the camp we’re suffering, first because there’s no water, but also because there aren’t any latrines. There’s no food, we don’t have enough to eat and we haven’t even got a roof over our heads. When it rains, we get soaked.
MSF’s teams are also witnessing an alarming increase in measles cases.
ITV Displaced person Agnes Otema

When you arrrive in Bulengo camp you see lots of children in the hospital. There are two tents with children suffering with measles.
My child was hospitalised in Bulengo camp. They treated him there, but sadly, his life was in danger. Because he couldn’t breathe, they brought him here [to the hospital in Kyeshero].
MSF assists displaced people in camps around Goma
and in the town of Lubero
by delivering medical care and
improving access to water, sanitation and hygiene.
Humanitarian aid is still wholly inadequate
given the scale of needs in North Kivu.