‘I thought I was going to be killed’

EVEN before the recent fighting, tensions were high in villages as displaced people fleeing sporadic armed clashes jostled with locals for a roof over their heads.

Women needing healthcare fled into banana fields in desperate bids for safety for themselves and their children. Often though, the conditions for those displaced are ripe for disease, explained Alice Gilbert, project officer with the charity MERLIN.

At one makeshift health clinic supported by the British medical charity in Kalengera, a village north of the country’s eastern capital Goma, overworked medical staff were feeling the strain. By 9am, one day, more than 60 patients sat silently outside except for the sick children coughing up into the grass. Most of the illnesses are the same.