COVID-19 in DRC
The latest COVID-19 news and resources, as well as tips to protect you and your family.

As the coronavirus has spread, so has misinformation – fueling discrimination and stigma. UNICEF is working with health experts to promote facts over fear, bringing trustworthy guidance to parents, caregivers and educators. Check our pages regularly to keep you informed about the best steps you can take to protect yourself and your family. Help us fight the misinformation surrounding COVID-19. Share this information with your family, friends and colleagues to make sure they are all properly informed about COVID-19.

CHILDREN IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO AT RISK FROM KILLER MEASLES, CHOLERA EPIDEMICS: UNICEF

DRC: Children at risk from killer measles and cholera. Public health centres, equipment, trained staff and funds are in desperately short supply and many facilities lack safe water and sanitation.

KINSHASA/GENEVA/NEW YORK, 31 March 2020 – The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)'s battered healthcare system needs urgent support as it struggles with measles and cholera epidemics that kill thousands of children, as well as the mounting threat from the coronavirus, COVID-19, says UNICEF.

In a report released today*, the UN children's agency says that ongoing efforts to contain an Ebola outbreak in the east of the country have diverted attention and resources from already enfeebled healthcare facilities which are dealing with several deadly endemic diseases.

Since early 2019, a measles epidemic – the worst in the world — has killed more than 5,300 children under the age of five, while there have been some 31,000 cases of cholera. Now, cases of the coronavirus, COVID-19, are increasing fast, posing a major challenge to a country identified as one of the most at risk in Africa.

Yet in public health centres, equipment, trained staff and funds are in desperately short supply. Many facilities even lack safe water and sanitation. Immunization rates that were already low have dropped sharply in some provinces over the past year.

An estimated 3.3 million children in the DRC have unmet vital health needs, while across the country, 9.1 million children (nearly one in five of the under-18 population) require humanitarian assistance.

Many of the most vulnerable children live in three conflict-affected eastern provinces impacted by the Ebola outbreak. Brutal militia violence – including attacks targeting health centres — forced nearly a million people from their homes in 2019 alone, making it even harder for children to access essential medical care.

Malaria, measles, and cholera epidemics are a lethal threat in every part of the country. Remote rural communities are particularly vulnerable. The report says that:

Around 16.5 million malaria cases were reported in 2019, causing nearly 17,000 deaths. Children under the age of 5 are most severely affected by the disease.
Measles cases surged in 2019-20, to reach 332,000 nationwide, making it the worst outbreak in the DRC's history. Out of more than 6,200 recorded fatalities, around 85 per cent were children under the age of five.
Cholera is endemic, the consequence of poor sanitation and the dirty water that many families rely on for drinking and washing. Cholera killed around 540 people in 2019. Children make up about 45 per cent of cases.
"Strengthening the DRC's basic healthcare system is absolutely vital," said UNICEF DRC Representative Edouard Beigbeder.

"Unless health facilities have the means to deliver immunization, nutrition and other essential services, including in remote areas of the country, we risk seeing the lives and futures of many Congolese children scarred or destroyed by preventable diseases."

In the report, UNICEF calls on the Government to allocate more of its budget for vital health care services supporting pregnant women, new-born and young children, and to prioritise the strengthening of routine immunization.

The agency urges international donors to commit generous multi-year support to the government's efforts to revamp routine health care services and to reach its SDG goals in water, sanitation and hygiene in order to better protect children against communicable diseases.

YEMEN IS SUFFERING.

Yemen crisis
Yemen is the largest humanitarian crisis in the world – and children are being robbed of their futures.

What's happening in Yemen?
Yemen is the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, with more than 24 million people – some 80 per cent of the population – in need of humanitarian assistance, including more than 12 million children.

Since the conflict escalated in March 2015, the country has become a living hell for the country's children. Now, with COVID-19 spreading, Yemen is facing an emergency within an emergency. Sanitation and clean water are in short supply. Only half of health facilities are functioning, and many that remain operational lack basic equipment like masks and gloves, let alone oxygen and other essential supplies to treat the coronavirus. Many health workers are receiving no salaries or incentives.

How is the crisis affecting children?

Children continue to be killed and maimed in the conflict, while the damage and closure of schools and hospitals has disrupted access to education and health services, leaving children even more vulnerable and robbing them of their futures.

Meanwhile, nearly 2.3 million children under the age of five in Yemen are projected to suffer from acute malnutrition in 2021, according to an analysis in February. Of these, 400,000 are expected to suffer from severe acute malnutrition and could die if they do not receive urgent treatment.

A dangerous combination of factors, driven by conflict and economic decline and now exacerbated by COVID-19, have compounded the dire situation for Yemen's youngest children.

What is UNICEF doing to help children in Yemen?

UNICEF is on the ground to save children's lives, to help them cope with the impact of conflict, and to help them to recover and resume their childhoods. Read more about UNICEF's work and results in the country, and how you can help.

Coronavirus death rates in Yemen's Aden could exceed its wartime fatalities
(CNN) Ghasan Saleh starts digging graves at the break of dawn to prepare for the dead bodies that will come in droves. Two men in white hazmat suits appear atop an approaching pickup truck. They hastily drop a corpse into a hole and cover it with dirt.

The health workers come and go in near-silence. Fear of infection means there are no mourners for those suspected to have died from Covid-19.

The cycle of digging and abrupt funerals continues under the blistering sun and suffocating humidity of Aden, the seat of power of the UN-recognized government in war-torn Yemen.

over the past few months, with new graves creeping closer to the residential buildings that border it. "You can see my digging machine," says Saleh. "Just now I dug 20 graves."

Local medical authorities say that death rates in Aden are soaring this year, despite a relative lull in a war that ravaged the place in previous years In the first half of May, the city recorded 950 deaths -- nearly four times as many as the 251 deaths in the whole month of March, according to a Ministry of Health report.

Those 950 deaths in two weeks in May represent nearly half the number of casualties the city suffered in all of 2015, when the country's civil war was raging.

Back then Aden was devastated by heavy fighting, its streets blasted by rockets and its houses peppered with bullets. Now the city's biggest killers are silent.

On top of Covid-19, there's also a mosquito-transmitted virus outbreak, known as Chikungunya virus, and more than 100,000 known cholera cases across the nation. Many malnutrition centers and hospitals have closed due to funding shortfalls and doctors' concerns about their personal safety from coronavirus. Flash floods this spring destroyed the city's power grid.

"Yemen has faced wars and cannot handle three pandemics, economic collapse and a war and the coronavirus," Dr. Ishraq Al-Subei, the health official responsible for the response to the disease told CNN.

The official Covid-19 death toll in southern Yemen stands at only 127. Health workers say they don't know what the actual number is, because of low testing capacity. But the huge surge in deaths in Aden is being seen as a warning of worse to come, as the health sector becomes overwhelmed and more people die of treatable diseases.

In pursuit of a hospital bed

Hmeid Mohammed, 38, had an agonizing journey that started with a mild fever at home.

His family couldn't find a hospital to take him to when his fever started to rise rapidly in early May. He was in a coma when he was admitted by the only hospital in Aden designated to treat Covid-19 at the time.

"They brought him back to life," his brother-in-law Anwar Motref recalled.

Humanitarian crisis in Yemen remains the worst in the world, warns UN

According to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) the "severity of needs is deepening", with the number of people in acute need, a staggering 27 per cent higher than last year, when it was already the most acute crisis on the globe.

Thursday's 2019 Humanitarian Needs Overview for Yemen report, shows that 14.3 million people are classified as being in acute need, with around 3.2 million requiring treatment for acute malnutrition; that includes two million children under-five, and more than one million pregnant and lactating women.

Highlighting that more than 20 million people across the country are food insecure, half of them suffering extreme levels of hunger, the report focuses on some key humanitarian issues: basic survival needs, protection of civilians and livelihoods and essential basic services.

"The escalation of the conflict since March 2015 has dramatically aggravated the protection crisis in which millions face risks to their safety and basic rights", OCHA reports.

The UN agency data shows that a total of 17.8 million people lack access to safe water and sanitation, and 19.7 million lack access to adequate healthcare. Poor sanitation and waterborne diseases, including cholera, left

Meanwhile, grain which could help feed millions, is still at risk of rotting in a key Red Sea storage facility because conditions are too unsafe to reach it, UN Special Envoy Martin Griffiths and UN Emergency relief chief Mark Lowcock said earlier this week.

Death toll and displaced people

During the past four years of intense conflict between Government forces and Houthi rebels have left tens of thousands dead or injured including at least 17,700 civilians as verified by the UN.

The agency adds that an estimated 3.3 million people remain displaced, up from 2.2 million last year, including 685,000 people who fled fighting in Hudaydah and on the west coast, from June onwards. According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the number of sites hosting displaced people has increased by almost half over the past 12 months.

How you can help people trapped in Yemen's humanitarian crisis

People in Yemen were already on the verge of famine when COVID-19 began to spread across the country in April 2020. For more than five years, Yemenis have struggled with growing poverty, disease and homelessness brought on by a war that continues to be fought on multiple fronts. The number of dead from the conflict in Yemen topped 100,000 last year.

On June 5, the United Nations' head of humanitarian operations in Yemen, Lise Grande, said the death toll from the pandemic could "exceed the combined toll of war, disease, and hunger."

Yemen produces little of its own food and fuel, so Yemenis rely on imports to survive. According to UN estimates, 15.9 million Yemenis — more than half the country's people — wake up hungry every day, and in the absence of food assistance, this number would rise to 20 million.

But international funding is dropping off. On June 2, a UN-sponsored donor conference brought in $1.35 billion, just half of what was raised last year. In the meantime, 12 million children across Yemen still need humanitarian assistance to survive.

So how can people help them?

The World surveyed journalists, humanitarians and Yemeni citizens to come up with this shortlist of aid groups — some small and local, others huge and global — with proven records of helping families in Yemen. Each is helping Yemenis survive what the United Nations has called the world's largest humanitarian crisis. We first posted this list in 2017, and we continue to update it.