COTE D’IVOIRE: Protecting Public Health Despite Political Impasse

  •  abidjan
  • Inter Press Service

The political stand-off between Alassane Ouattara, certified by the United Nations as winner of Nov. 28 elections, and the incumbent president, Laurent Gbagbo, who has refused to step down, is stretching into its eighth week.

Civil disobedience in support of Ouattara in the north of the country means up to 800,000 children did not resume school as scheduled two weeks ago. In the south, uncertainty prevails over the safety of children or teachers as gunfire is heard around the Golf Hotel where Ouattara is protected by United Nations troops.

The 9,000-strong U.N. Operation in Côte d'Ivoire (UNOCI) was reinforced with 2,000 additional peacekeepers last week, as armed forces loyal to Gbagbo said they would stop and search U.N. vehicles.

U.N. officials have been prevented from visiting the sites of alleged human rights violations; UNOCI puts the death toll from political violence at 260. Fifty thousand people have been displaced, as many as 30,000 of these across the border into neighbouring Liberia.

Health services have also been disrupted. Aurélien Kouamé, a nurse at a dispensary in Borotou, in the northwest of the country, returned to the capital with three of his colleagues immediately after the elections. He is waiting for a peaceful resolution before returning to his station. 'We were afraid for our safety (as government workers),' he told IPS. 'And as you've seen in many other sectors of government, many people have fled areas under control of the former rebels out of fear. Health services have been abandoned.'

Speaking to IPS by phone from the northern town of Odienné, health worker Daouda Soro said, 'Essential drugs are beginning to run out in hospitals. Before the crisis, it was the Public Health Pharmacy that supplied us. For the past two months, there has been nothing. Sick people have turned to self-medicating with medicine bought on the street.'

One urgent public health exercise is going ahead. A yellow fever vaccination campaign, twice postponed, began on Jan. 22 and will last a week. UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, is targeting 830,000 adults and children over the age of nine months in four districts. The $100,000 campaign is in response to an epidemic declared three months ago in several areas in the centre and north of the country.

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service