On Monday, June 7, 2021, the general referral hospital in the town of Boga, supported by MSF, was the target of looting during the fighting in the town.
The overall results of these confrontations show for the moment a dozen dead including 10 civilians, the hospital has meanwhile been destroyed. Several buildings, including intensive care, were burned, the pharmacy and medical stock looted. Nine injured people were received at the general hospital in the neighboring town of Gety, supported by MSF.
This extremely violent attack prevented the Boga hospital, the only structure still operational in the health zone, from functioning and assisting the more than 80,000 people who depended on it. Hundreds of malnourished children will no longer have access to the nutritional program set up by MSF and thousands of people are now without access to healthcare. The teams of the humanitarian organization are appalled by the extent of the damage caused to this health structure, the construction of which it had coordinated between 2017 and 2020 in order to fill the crawl space in the health zone.
It all went up in smoke within hours as we keep saying this structure is critical to the people of the region.
In recent months, MSF has continued to warn of growing insecurity added to a new wave of malnourished children and an increase in cases of sexual violence preventing women in particular from going to work. in the fields. “Hospitals in conflict zones must remain protected and neutral spaces. All the parties to the conflicts in Ituri must respect the patients and the humanitarian action of health workers, ”continues Frédéric Lai Manantsoa.
MSF expresses its deep indignation at this attack, perpetrated in violation of international humanitarian law, and the consequences of which will be felt over time. Without a clear understanding on the part of the various parties to the conflict of the need to protect the medical mission in Ituri, humanitarian aid workers and health workers are condemned to repeat an absurd circle of permanent reconstruction of health structures themselves intended for be destroyed again.
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