Highlights
IOM constructed 200 emergency shelters in Katanika displacement site and provided in collaboration with the UNHCR and the RRMP 1,748 IDP households in Kikumbe displacement site with shelter kits.
IOM trained 30 staff on the Displacement Tracking Matrix in preparation for the second baseline study in seven provinces.
To date, IOM has transferred 3,154 IDPs from collective centres in Kalemie to displacement sites, and provided voluntary return assistance to 390 IDPs to return to their areas of origin.
Situation Overview
During the reporting period, Ebola Virus Disease was declared on 8 May 2018 in the North-Western province of Equateur in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The disease was detected in the village of Bikoro and has since reached urban areas in the city of Mbandaka where the first cases were detected on 11 May 2018. This is the ninth outbreak in this area since the virus was discovered in 1976. The humanitarian community is working alongside the Congolese authorities to mitigate the spreading of the disease.
IOM aims to respond by focusing on the surveillance of Point of Entries (POE) to cities and by doing risk communication and promoting sanitary control. IOM in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO), has already started mapping population mobility (both by using qualitative and quantitative methodologies) through participatory mapping exercises, as well as point surveillance at the selected key POEs including those in Kinshasa. The activities also include cross border coordination with the Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic, strengthening community based surveillance at the border space, developing joint Standard Operating Procedures and conducting quick simulation exercises at border communities.
Since January 2018, approximately 20,400 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) have returned to their areas of origin in Kashugho in Lubero territory, North Kivu. These IDPs fled the territory in 2017 due to recurrent violent clashes between armed groups. Since the start of the influx of returnees, Kasugho’s main health centre has experienced a shortage of medicine and materials. This in combination with the prolonged presence of armed groups in the region has degraded the health situation where many of the local population and returnees have not been able to pay for medical care. Consequently, a drop in immunization coverage and recurrence of several diseases such as malaria, acute severe malnutrition and respiratory infections have been detected in the region.