World Humanitarian Day 2015 - Medair Relief Workers Risking Their Lives Daily in One of the Worst Humanitarian Crises: the D.R.Congo

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Medair

19 Aug, 2015, 08:52 GMT

LAUSANNE, Switzerland, August 19, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

 

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On the occasion of World Humanitarian Day, emergency relief and recovery organisation Medair salutes relief workers risking their lives every day to save others in extremely remote and insecure areas. In a very isolated and conflicted area of the D.R. Congo, about 140 km west of Goma, Medair has recently set up a team to support the vulnerable population: http://relief.medair.org/en/where-we-help/dr-congo/

     (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150507/743570-b )

     (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150819/259548 )
     (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150819/259550 )

Medair's staff makes significant sacrifices to work in remote Congo, risking their lives to help vulnerable people. "The area is the heartland of armed groups and the villages where we support health facilities, which are located up to six hours from any road, are often caught up in the fighting. Medair workers sometimes have to flee to the forest for twenty-four hours," says Joanna Coffin, country director.

The region has been affected by on-going rebel conflict for 18 years. The people are often caught in cross-fire and victimised by the compulsory payment of "protection money," theft, looting, and reprisals for contact with an opposing group.

The villages, which can't be reached by motorcycle, used to have mud hut clinics but no medicines to dispense. Now, Medair is providing medicines, free health care, and training for staff. The aid agency also gives local people a badly needed income by hiring them to work on widening and improving the trails so that vehicles can one day pass with supplies and medicines.

Thanks to Medair's work in 2014, more than 1.5 million people around the world received life-saving support. On World Humanitarian Day, Medair not only honors the humanitarians who risk their lives daily to save lives but also the 120 aid workers who lost theirs in 2014 alone*.

(*Aid Worker Security Report 2015)

For more information about Medair's D.R. Congo programme, please click here

http://relief.medair.org

Twitter: https://twitter.com/medairint, https://twitter.com/medair_DRC

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MedairInt

For Media  

Please contact: Nathalie Fauveau, Press Relations Officer (French, English, German) nathalie.fauveau@medair.org, +41-(0)21-694-84-72 or +41-(0)78-635-30-95.