Ben Affleck visits IMC program in Congo

Photo: IMC/Margaret Aguirre

Affleck speaks with an International Medical Corps program coordinator at a primary health care and nutrition facility in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo

Actor and director Ben Affleck recently returned from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he traveled through the country’s most volatile areas of North and South Kivu, to draw attention to the ongoing humanitarian crisis that has killed millions. Accompanied by the ABC News program, Nightline, Affleck met with civilians, war lords, and relief agencies in an effort to open a window to audiences back home about the struggles the people of Congo face every day to survive. His video diary, which aired on Nightline on June 26th, shows his visit to an International Medical Corps (IMC) primary health care and nutrition facility at a camp in North Kivu, where he met with program coordinator, Woseh Gobeh.

Click here to watch Affleck’s video diary and his time with International Medical Corps.

Hidden Epidemic of Malnutrition and Disease Plagues Smallest Victims
By Margaret Aguirre

It’s been a year since I was last here in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Photo: IMC/Margaret Aguirre

18-month-old Ivote, with his mother, Sophia, outside their home in Mugunga Camp, near Goma, DRC

The sad truth is that violent conflict is still raging, particularly in North Kivu Province, where government forces (called the FARDC) and the various rebel groups (like the predominantly Rwandan FDLR, CNDP forces, and the Mai-Mai) are constantly going at each other. Civilians, as always, are caught in the middle.

Over the summer of 2007, the conflict intensified in North Kivu, forcing hundreds of thousands from their homes. And despite a ceasefire reached in January, the region remains chronically unstable. Since late 2006, an estimated 850,000 have been displaced in this province alone, and that number is expected to increase in the coming months as the FARDC attempts to retake areas held by the FDLR.

Much has been said and written about the epidemic of sexual violence being perpetrated against women and children. Frankly, no amount of words is enough. But there is another epidemic here that has not captured the spotlight: during the 1998-2003 war, and the resulting humanitarian catastrophe, most of the estimated 5.4 million deaths have come from hunger and disease. The most vulnerable are the children.

That’s where an 18-month-old boy named Ivote (pronounced EE-vote), comes in. He was named in honor of DRC’s historic elections in late 2006. He very nearly didn’t make it to his first birthday.

Last October, Ivote’s parents and his three brothers fled from their village near Masisi, where some of the worst fighting has taken place. Already, two of his siblings had been killed.

Photo: IMC/Margaret Aguirre

After traveling 40 miles to Mugunga refugee camp, 11-month-old Ivote weighed only two pounds. His mother had lost all hope for his survival until she connected with International Medical Corps, who helped Ivote recover by feeding him in three-hour intervals.

For months, Ivote had been suffering from diarrhea and malnutrition. No doctor or traditional healer was able to help him. By the time he and his family had made the 40-mile journey south to Mugunga displacement camp, outside Goma, he was near death – a skeletal child who could not stand, could scarcely speak, and his limbs frozen stiff. At the age of 11 months, he weighed just over two pounds.

His mother, Sophia, tells me she had lost all hope that he would live.

International Medical Corps is running primary health care clinics and supplementary feeding centers in Mugunga and other nearby camps, serving more than 300,000 people. International Medical Corps immediately transferred Ivote to Virunga Hospital in Goma, where we treat about 100 new cases of severely malnourished children a month.

Ivote suffered from a type of malnutrition called marasmus. Most of us are familiar with what this looks like from the images that emerge during famine: shockingly skeletal children, weak and unresponsive. Children with marasmus are literally starving and must be treated with therapeutic foods given under medical supervision in order to survive.

Marasmus is actually relatively uncommon in North Kivu. Ninety percent of children here suffer from what’s called kwashiorkor, which is caused by a lack of protein. With kwashiorkor, the baby is bloated, with fat feet and cracked skin. In the most severe cases, the skin bursts and the child is covered in large swaths of bloody sores. It is wrenching. Here in North Kivu one of the exacerbating factors is that families often must flee fighting and hide in the bush. They go many days without food or with only protein-deficient food like cassava that causes children’s bodies to bloat with water. By the time they reach the camps, many have stopped eating entirely.

The vast majority of the children International Medical Corps is treating for severe malnutrition at Virunga Hospital have come from the camps, where they are identified by outreach teams for more intensive treatment. When they arrive, they often suffer from other complications, like diarrhea, malaria and respiratory infection, which must be treated immediately.

Photo: IMC/Margaret Aguirre

18-month-old Ivote, after recovering from severe malnutrition at an IMC Therapeutic Feeding Center at Virunga Hospital in Goma, DRC

While malnourished children are being treated, mothers and siblings –who can’t be left alone in the camps – move into the center, where they are clothed and fed a diverse diet, including maize flour, beans, oil, fish and salt.

International Medical Corps’ recovery rate at Virunga Hospital is 95 percent. For most children, recovery time – if they suffer from no other maladies – takes about two months, after which they are discharged back to the camps and are monitored at International Medical Corps’ supplemental feeding centers.

For Ivote, recovery took two months, when he left the feeding center he was 14 pounds, 7 times his weight upon entry into the program. Five months after his discharge he has continued to gain weight, his chubby cheeks and bright eyes make him unrecognizable as the same child in the photos when he arrived. He waddles around the hospital grounds like a typical 18-month-old.

As I’m leaving the center I see new arrivals of severely malnourished children that need our help. A father, seeing me taking pictures, hoists his feeble daughter up to his shoulder and asks me to take her. Her legs are covered in cracked, bloated skin. Her right eye is sealed shut from conjunctivitis. It is heartbreaking to look at her – and to see her father’s anguish at her condition.

The only consolation I can find is that in all likelihood, in a month’s time, she, like the scores of other children here, will be fully recovered and headed back to her home in the camp. That is my hope.