The child moaning as he lies on a bit of dirty cloth on the hospital floor has more bone than flesh. He has no family, but his fate is shared by thousands of children, victims of the famine and poverty crippling Angola.
By his side are three other sick children, all of them weak, hungry and begging for food with no hope of receiving any. For the 20 patients admitted to the hospital in this tiny town in Bie province, 700 kilometres southeast of Luanda, they manage to eat if their families bring food.
They sleep on the ground because there are no beds. They receive no medical care because there is no medicine and no equipment.
The hospital’s pharmacy has only a dozen bottles of pills. Minor surgery is performed on a rusty table.
”We have absolutely nothing,” said Luis Katoto, a nurse who despite it all tries to run the place as well as possible ? though in April the shortages led to operations being shut down.
”A few days ago, we received a few medicines from Luanda. But we won’t get any more for three months,” he said.
Eighteen-year-old Lucas Kandumba has been hospitalised here for more than one year. He sees death around the corner.
”I know I’m going to die soon,” he says. ”To tell the truth, I’ve never seen food at this hospital, and I’ve never received treatment.”
The only reason he stays is because the staff occasionally can give him a pill to ease his pain. Katoto says the ”the only hope for these children” is to wait for a visit from Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
In Kwemba district, malnutrition kills 20 people a week in a population of 44 677 people, according to statistics from local authorities. About 12 525 people live in Kwemba town.
Because of this region’s isolation during the 27-year civil war, ”they have lived for 10 years without any medical aid,” Katoto said.
But people here now dare to believe that ”the situation could improve” following the April 4 ceasefire between the army and the rebel National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita).
During the war years, almost all the residents of Kwemba town and the surrounding villages abandoned their homes to seek refuge in the bush, where they hoped to eek out a survival.
Now they’re slowly returning home.
”It was hell, living in the forest,” one child said.
In the village of Chindumba, about 10 kilometres from Kwemba, Fausta Chilwaka carries a baby on her back and a rat in her hand as she walks toward her shack.
”My family is starving. We’ll eat it soon,” she said with a sad smile.
Eulice Chilwata, another sickly woman who has trouble walking, gathers plant leaves to feed her five children. One of her children, who was paralysed by polio, eats roots.
The arrival of a UN team in Chindumba brought hope.
”We will have food,” a young man said, rejoicing after learning the UN’s World Food Program (WFP) would begin distributing basic foods on Friday to the 758 people in the village.
Fertile soil spreads out in every direction from Kwemba, but the villagers have neither tools nor seeds and cannot plant any crops.
The situation in this region of Bie reflects the problems in most of Angola.
Since the ceasefire, teams from the United Nations and several non-government organisations have visited regions previously blocked off by the war.
In these newly accessible regions, they found catastrophic conditions, estimating that at least 200 000 people are suffering from severe malnutrition and need immediate aid for any hope of survival. – Sapa-AFP