The population in the North-Kivu province has been confronted with chronic cycles of violence for nearly three decades, as various armed actors seek to seize control of the territory and its resources. Since March 2022, an upsurge in armed conflict has forced more than one million people to flee their homes, causing a humanitarian disaster and exacerbating the already critical humanitarian situation in the province.
The Mweso health zone has not been spared. Population movements have intensified at the same time as armed clashes moved closer to the villages. Access to the lands are more and more restricted by weapons carriers, resulting in communities having difficulties to farm their land. Despite the high level of violence, MSF has maintained its operational presence in the area.
Doctors without borders / Médecins Sans frontières (MSF) have been providing free medical care in the Mweso health zone since 2005, where baseline health conditions are poor due to a dysfunctional health system and an ongoing active and protracted conflict. In partnership with the Ministry of health, MSF teams support all the services of the general referral hospital (330 beds), the Mweso town health centre and the Tumaini clinic in Kitchanga. MSF supports also remotely 8 health centres in the area: 5 of them offering full primary care and 4 others focusing mostly on malaria, paediatric diarrhoea and respiratory infections as well as survivors of sexual violences.
MSF remains the largest humanitarian medical actor in zone to provide medical assistance and alleviate the suffering of nearly half million residents of Mweso health zone and several thousands of displaced people from the neighbouring health zones. In this changing context, the volume of patients treated in the medical facilities supported by MSF has increased since the beginning of the year. Patients are coming from further and further afield, often from areas where health facilities are no longer functional. The general referral hospital of Mweso has been seen and taken as a place of refuge for many patients and displaced people in the past months. On average, the hospital has recorded 2700 admissions a month for all departments since the beginning of the year, so 500 patients more a month compared to last year same time.