The Republic of Congo’s government has launched a nationwide weeklong campaign of action aimed at tackling the country’s high rates of infant, juvenile and maternal mortality.

“I seize this opportunity to fight maternal and infant mortality, my primary concern,” Health and Social Affairs Minister Emilienne Raoul said at the launch of the campaign in the town of Ouesso, some 800 km north of the capital, Brazzzaville.

According to a 2005 demographic and health survey, 781 of every 100,000 births resulted in the death of the mother. The same survey showed the infant and juvenile mortality rates to be 75 and 117 per thousand respectively. The survey also showed that there had been no improvement in these indicators since 1990.

Across the country during the week of action, impregnated bed nets are to be distributed, while children are to be treated for parasites, given vitamin A supplements and pregnant mothers given birth kits.

The government used the occasion of the week of action to give birth certificates to 2,012 as yet unregistered children in indigenous communities.

“Our children have this right because they are citizens just like the Bantu,” said Paul Ngama, head of one such family.

Indigenous communities, sometimes referred to as Pygmies, account for about 10 percent of Congo’s three million inhabitants.

IRIN 

Free anti-malaria medicine will soon become a reality for children younger than five and pregnant mothers after the launch of the first phase of countrywide trials to promote access to the drugs in health centres, government officials have said.

“[Since last May] we have conducted the first trials in 27 health centres around the country as part of our programme to provide the drugs to children and pregnant women,” François Libama, the director for the National Programme to Fight Malaria (PNLP), said.

He said another 38 health centres had been included. “That adds up to 65,” he said. The campaign was targeting 244 health centres countrywide by year-end.

“Currently, we are providing medicine to treat the simple forms of malaria in the health centres; in the second year, we will address the more serious forms in the hospitals,” Libama said.

The free anti-malaria treatment campaign was officially launched in Brazzaville on 15 July this year.

The government had received 272,000 boxes of anti-malaria drugs from an Indian pharmaceutical company, CIPLA, according to the Minister for Health, Social Affairs and the Family, Emilienne Raoul.

Malaria is the leading cause of death among children younger than five in the Congo, with at least 21,000 dying each year, according to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the PNLP in Congo.
The disease is also the leading cause of clinic attendance among children, said the PNLP.

UNICEF estimates that at least 5 percent of pregnant women and children younger than five sleep under a treated mosquito net. In 2007, the Congolese government distributed 525,686 insecticide-treated nets as part of an integrated health campaign that also targeted measles and malnutrition in children younger than five.

The fight against malaria is among the country’s national priorities, in line with various development strategies such as the strategy for the reduction of poverty, the National Health Development Plan and Millennium Development Goals.

In 2007, President Denis Sassou Nguesso waived anti-malarial treatment costs for pregnant women and children younger than five. In December, he extended the directive to all children younger than 15.

IRIN

Louya, a 16-year-old boy begging in the Fonde market of Pointe-Noire, Congo's southern port city, said he was an orphan who had lived on the streets since 1997.

"Muké na satu, muké na satu ['I am hungry, I am hungry' in Kituba]," he beseeched passersby.

Like Louya, several other barefoot boys and girls were begging for money or doing odd jobs to pay for food.

The children are part of a growing number living on Congo's streets, say specialists. According to Florent Niama, managing director of the NGO l'Action Sociale, their number is estimated at around 3,000, but the phenomenon "is growing in [Congo's] cities".

And it is not just in Pointe-Noire, where the NGO Samu Social estimates more than 500 live on the streets, or in the capital, Brazzaville. In Dolisie, a city in the southwest, hundreds of children fend for themselves each day.

Analysts attribute the growing phenomenon to deteriorating social conditions within the family, witchcraft and parental negligence. Armed conflicts in the country had also contributed, they add.

According to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), Congo has continued to feel the effects of a decade-long brutal civil war that ended in 2003, displaced millions of people and ravaged the economy.

The war left in its wake thousands of children without birth certificates, young girls with babies from unknown fathers, and child soldiers needing demobilisation and reintegration into civil society.

Training programmes

In a bid to respond to the problem of street children, the government has since 2004 launched two programmes. First, it established a centre for the reintegration of vulnerable children, providing food, schooling and training in leatherwork, dressmaking and baking.

Then, with UNICEF, it launched a project to reintegrate them into families in August 2005. The project is being implemented in Brazzaville and Pointe-Noire.

So far, 40 children have been identified and reunited with their families in Brazzaville. Another 22 have gone back to school while 16 are undergoing training. In Pointe-Noire, 37 children have been identified, of whom 17 were reunited with their biological families - but five went back to the streets.

The project, which works with various NGOs, has also trained officials from the government's department of social affairs on the care and reintegration of street children, according to a progress report.
"Our approach consists of providing shelter for children with difficulties to stabilise them before finding an appropriate solution - whether social or family reintegration," Josué Nlemvo Ntelo, coordinator of one of the NGOs, Association Espace Enfant (AEE), told IRIN in Pointe-Noire.

The NGO, which was established in 1997, looks after children in vulnerable situations, and also has an education centre. It shelters 26 children, some from families living in precarious conditions.

Trafficking

Congolese authorities have also had to deal with increasing trafficking of children, mostly for labour.

A report prepared by UNICEF and the Congolese government in 2007 estimated that 200,000 children were affected by trafficking every year across the central and West African region.

Many of these children were orphans or unaccompanied following the civil wars, according to local NGOs. Since 2006, for example, Action Against the Trafficking of West African Children (ALTO) has dealt with almost 100 cases and helped repatriate about 50 in Pointe-Noire.

IRIN 

At least 8,000 children between the ages of six months and five years have received vitamin A supplements in a health campaign aimed at eradicating vitamin deficiency in southwestern Congo.

"Since June 2005 we have administered the vitamin in the form of capsules as part of our intervention programme," said Charles Ngoussa, the head of local health NGO Dynamisation des Initiatives Locales, which is based in Sibiti, the main town in Lékoumou.

Vitamin A boosts the body's immunity, increasing children's resistance to infections. It stimulates mental and physical growth through the synthesis of proteins. The vitamin is also important in improving vision, preventing eye infections and in the production of red blood cells. Vitamin A supplements contribute to the reduction of mortality from diseases such as diarrhoea and measles.
 
Vitamin A deficiency leads to an increase in infectious and parasitic diseases, stunted mental and physical development, declining vision [night blindness] and ultimately blindness, as well as increasing the likelihood of developing anaemia due a reduction in red blood cells.

Among the children who received the vitamin supplements in the ongoing campaign were 2,000 children from indigenous communities (‘Pygmies’), Ngoussa said.

He said these children were the most vulnerable, adding: "If in general the situation of the Congolese children is of concern to us, then that of the pygmy children is even of greater concern as can be seen in the precarious way in which the indigenous communities live."

The nutritional status of children under five remains of major concern in Congo, due to the prevalence of malnutrition. Although there are no official statistics, children from the rural areas are the most affected by malnutrition.

According to Ngoussa, different forms of malnutrition are exacerbated by poverty, which prevents the population from accessing medical care. At least 50.7 percent of the Congolese population live below the poverty line (less than US$1 a day), according to a household survey conducted by the World Bank in 2005.

The UN Children's Fund says between 200 and 300 million pre-school children in developing countries are at risk of vitamin A deficiency. At least 500,000 children lose their sight each year in these countries, and almost 70 percent die within a year.

The Congo vitamin A campaign is supported by Swiss organisation Voire et Vivre.

Meanwhile, “Out of 711,233 children between the age of six months and five years, 677,390 children were vaccinated against measles, provided with vitamin A supplements and dewormed representing a 95.2 percent coverage," Emilienne Raoul, the minister of health and social services told IRIN on 3 April.

"At least 525,686 insecticide treated mosquito nets were also distributed," Raoul said. "The [health] campaign was a genuine success.”

The campaign aimed to reduce infant mortality by fighting malnutrition, malaria and measles, which are the leading causes of mortality and morbidity among children Congo.

IRIN

The High Court in southwestern Congo has indicted a member of an influential family on charges that he was responsible for the forced disappearance 19 years ago of a child from a family of indigenous people, a human rights organisation reported.

Omer Gapa, a former local council official in Sabiti district, was detained by the police on 21 March after the court issued an arrest warrant. He has been accused of taking a six-year-old girl in 1989 against the wishes of her parents. The child has not been heard of since, the Observatoire Congolais des Droits de l’Homme (OCDH) said in a statement.

"Mr Gapa's insolence amid numerous requests [for an explanation] by parents of the girl forced us to go to court to force him to shed light on this matter," said Gabriel Mavanga Bakala, the OCDH official in charge of legal affairs. Gapa at one point claimed that the girl had been taken to France for education.

There are several groups of indigenous communities, often referred to as ‘Pygmies’, in Congo’s forests, including the Baka, Bakola, Aka, Babongo, Bambuti and Batwa, who have often complained of being marginalised and shunned by other communities. Human rights groups say the communities suffer discrimination, exploitation and disrespect by members of other ethnic groups.

OCDH and APSPC, an association championing the rights of indigenous people in Congo, took up the matter on behalf of the parents of the missing child.

They said the case was further proof of marginalisation, discrimination and ill-treatment of the indigenous peoples of Congo.

Both organisations have recommended that the government should keep its promise to the international community and adopt a draft law promoting the protection of the rights of these communities. The law was drafted by the Department of Justice and Human Rights more than three years ago.

IRIN