In the News Page 6 February, 2001

Sorry, there's too much news for me to list the whole articles!

Please click on the links for the whole article, and I will post small blurbs about the

more interesting news pieces. All links are listed in chronological order.

Multimedia News Items

Taking Guinea Back Ivan Watson reports that residents of Gueckedou, Guinea, are now returning to their homes after Guinean government troops recaptured the city
from rebels this week. The town is situated along one of the most dangerous borders in Africa, and fighting in the area continues. (2:54) NPR

Is there blood on these diamonds? Amnesty International is campaigning to stop the importation of
'conflict' diamonds from Sierra Leone. To learn more, follow the link to take
action. Check out this flash movie. They are called conflict diamonds, and they pay for weapons, terror
and violence in Africa but Congress and the diamond industry haven't done enough to stop the trade in these deadly gems.

WEST AFRICA'S TANGLED WAR Click around West Africa to see the war as outlined by key dates.

Caught in conflict: West African violence spreads to Guinea - 3-4
minute BBC audio segment, mostly from Nyaedou camp

"A massive refugee crisis is taking place" - 2-3 minute BBC video
segment from Nyaedou camp and environs

Flare up near Gueckedou

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_1145000/1145876.stm

http://allafrica.com/stories/200101300177.html

FIGHTING ESCLATES IN [SOUTHERN] GUINEA
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_1149000/1149224.stm

UNDP TO ASSIST DISPLACED GUINEANS IN KANKAN [est.
number: 47,000]
http://allafrica.com/stories/200101310322.html

ANNUAL TRADE FAIR [IN CONAKRY] UNDERWAY
http://allafrica.com/stories/200102020204.html

Fighting in troubled West African region leaves 110 dead (evidently
rebels, near Macenta):

http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/480fa8736b88bbc3c12564f6004c8ad5/f4191c60823e54f5c12569e7005b0fc2?OpenDocument

It sounds as though an alliance between the Guinean military and
Liberian ULIMO forces in Gueckedou has gone sour, and the ULIMO folks have
joined with the opposition.

GUINEA'S FIRST EXECUTIONS IN 17 YEARS [since Lansana
Conté came to power]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_1154000/1154792.stm

Five people were executed in a number of
provincial capitals for offences including murder
and armed robbery.

The Justice Minister, Abou Kamara, told the
BBC that the executions were the beginning of
a campaign to combat lawlessness and he
would be pitiless in enforcing the death
penalty.

GUINEA UNVEILS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM
http://allafrica.com/stories/200102040018.html

PROTOCOLE ENTRE LE CORPS DE LA PAIX ET L'ASSEMBLEE
NATIONALE
http://www.boubah.com/Guineenews.htm#link1345

[Note: article in French on accord between Peace
Corps/USAID and Guinean national assembly regarding
the installation of high speed Internet]

GUINEA REFUGEES BEGIN MOVE TO SAFETY
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_1156000/1156749.stm

Concern is growing for some 170,000 refugees
trapped by fierce fighting in the volatile
southern Guinea border region.

The United Nations refugee agency is still
unable to reach a large group trapped in an
area known as the Parrot's Beak close to
Guinea's border with Sierra Leone and Liberia.

FLEEING GUINEA'S CLASHES (BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_1160000/1160785.stm

AID BLOCKED FOR REFUGEES IN GUINEA (BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_1161000/1161169.stm

GUINEA: Washington grants US $5m for refugees

http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN/wa/countrystories/guinea/20010208.phtml

ABIDJAN, 8 February (IRIN) - US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher
said on Wednesday that his government had given an additional US $5 million in
emergency aid to refugees and internally displaced persons in Guinea.

West Africa's curse of wear visits Guinea
By Ivan Watson, Globe Correspondent, 2/11/2001

GUECKEDOU, Guinea - Profiting from a brief lull in Guinea's bloody but
little-reported war, residents drifted back to their hometown for the
first time since they had fled two months earlier.

A body, hands and feet missing, lay rotting on a ruined street. The
town's marketplace, once a regional center in West African trade, lay in
ruins. Machine gun casings were scattered everywhere.

One young man's shop lay in a pile of twisted metal and rubble. As an
army truck passed, the man flung his arms outward and screamed: ''There is
nothing left!''

A former civil servant, Saint-Jacques Lazard, looked dazed as he stood
on a street corner.

''The police station, town hall and treasury have all been burned,''
Lazard said. ''The stores have been completely burned. We were only allowed to
return this morning. The houses have all been sacked and burned.''

Since December, the border town of Gueckedou has been the front line in
West Africa's latest conflict, pitting Guinea's army against rebel factions
from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.When rebels raided Gueckedou in December, almost all of the town's 200,000 inhabitants melted into the surrounding jungle.

After weeks of heavy artillery bombardment and helicopter-gunship
rocket attacks, government forces announced this month that they had won
control of the town. Less than four days later, the rebels retook it.

Fighting on Friday prompted 30,000 people to flee a refugee camp less
than 10 miles away. Within hours on Friday morning, the civilians, mostly
refugees from wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia, had gone, fleeing
northward.

''If there's a shot fired ... there's an immediate reaction. People
just run,'' said Keri Jenks, an aid worker with the American Refugee
Committee.

Until the fighting began, Jenks, from New Boston, N.H., a hamlet near
Nashua, had been helping Liberian and Sierra Leonean families to start
businesses in their adopted country. Her new, much humbler goal: to feed and house them.

''The phenomenon that began in Liberia 10 years ago seems to be moving,
and it's very alarming,'' said Peter Kessler of the United Nations refugee agency, the High Commissioner for Refugees.

Over the past decade, Guinea's reputation for peace and stability
seemed to have made it a haven amid its neighbors' quarrels. A half-million
refugees streamed in.

Now, those refugees, as well as the population in the southeastern
forests, are trapped in what one UN spokesman calls Africa's most dangerous
border zone.

Scrawled on bullet-ridden walls in Gueckedou are the initials of
Guinean dissidents aiming to overthrow General Lansana Conte, the dictator who
has ruled Guinea for 17 years.

But witnesses say the fighters who entered Gueckedou in December,
shooting and singing in a variety of English Creole dialects, were from Sierra
Leone's Revolutionary United Front.

The Leonean Front shocked the world with its spree of amputation,
inflicted upon tens of thousands. The front has close ties to the Liberian
leader,Charles Taylor, whom the United Nations accuses of fueling the region's
conflicts by selling weapons to the Front in exchange for diamonds.

Liberian commandos are said to be involved in the Guinean fighting.
Amid this patchwork of gangs stands a homegrown faction, ULIMO, once backed
by Guinea's army but now fighting it. ''ULIMO counterattacked the Guinean
Army,'' said a Guinean Army officer, Adjutant Amadou Bah.

''The combat unfolded on a vast scale,'' Bah said, adding that the
military had to use the artillery against its former allies. ''After having
finished the battle, we were horrified when we saw the destruction committed.
Everybody wanted to shut their eyes.''

For many people in the region, this type of warfare has a common
thread. ''This is the same thing that happened before in our area,'' said M.S.
Bayo, a Sierra Leonean who fled to Guinea in 1994.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees' office estimates that almost a
quarter-million refugees from Sierra Leone and Liberia live in dozens
of camps along the ''Parrot's Beak,'' a triangle of Guinean territory that
juts into Sierra Leone and Liberia.

These refugee camps are becoming a battleground in the border war, and
the refugees themselves are becoming the targets of the terrified local
Guineans who originally welcomed them.

Last September, in an effort to bolster Guinea's poorly trained army,
the Guinean government began distributing weapons to hastily organized
volunteer militias.

One day last week, a checkpoint on the road to Gueckedou was manned by
50 Guinean militiamen wearing soccer jerseys, shorts, and, occasionally,
army-issue pants or camouflage hats.

Half of the men carried rifles, and nearly all wore necklaces with
amulets made of two bullets stuck side-by-side, with the idea of making them
appear invisible to rebels. At one point, a large white truck roared by,
loaded with armed youths in red headbands, the colors of a faction of ULIMO
that is still apparently fighting with the government. One UN worker stared
after it, saying that the truck had been stolen from the UN's refugee agency.

Later, in Kissidougou, a town north of Gueckedou that has been swamped
by displaced Guineans and foreign refugees, Adjutant Bah cradled his
machine gun and shook his head in disgust. ''Arming civilians ... this creates anarchy,'' he said. ''If this
continues like this, Guinea will be worse than Liberia and Sierra Leone.''

This story ran on page 13 of the Boston Globe on 2/11/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.

Q&A GUINEA'S REFUGEE CRISIS (BBC) --

Useful if you haven't followed the situation that closely
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_1166000/1166383.stm

UN CALLS FOR GUINEA SAFE CORRIDOR --

New UNHCR Chief Visits to Guinea
BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_1166000/1166358.stm

TAYLOR, RUF ISSUE WARNINGS AS REFUGEES POUR (The
Perspective via allafrica.com)
http://allafrica.com/stories/200102120320.html

FIGHTING AFFECTS REFUGEES

Allafrica.com:
http://allafrica.com/stories/200102120020.html

Washington Post, Feb. 13

Refugee Tide Swells in West Africa
Tens of Thousands Cut Off as Warfare Spreads to Three
Nations

Thousands of refugees flee fighting in Liberia and
Sierra Leone and seek refuge in camps with no food or
shelter. (Douglas Farah - The Washington Post) \

By Douglas Farah
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, February 13, 2001; Page A01

KATKAMA REFUGEE CAMP, Guinea -- Tens of thousands of
refugees, abandoned months ago by international relief
agencies, are struggling to escape a spreading war in
West Africa, creating what U.N. officials call one of
the most serious humanitarian crises in the world.

Over the weekend, about 25,000 refugees from Sierra
Leone and Liberia fled camps near Guinea's southern
border, where fighting among a variety of armies and
guerrilla factions has intensified in recent weeks.
Most made the trip north to this abandoned refugee
center on foot, some walking dozens of miles with
babies strapped to their backs and their meager
possessions in bundles on their heads. Many begged for
food and water as they sat on a dusty expanse under
the tropical sun.

U.N. officials said that at least 180,000 more
refugees are hiding in the jungle as they struggle
northward to safety. Since December, hundreds and
perhaps thousands of refugees have been killed in
fighting near the Guinean border or died of starvation
and hardship, according to refugees, humanitarian
workers and Guinean officials.

"Humanitarian groups have little access to the areas
of most fighting, but we must do more -- and do it
quickly," said Ewald Stals, refugee coordinator for
the medical aid group Doctors Without Borders. "At the
rate we are going it will take us six months just to
move the people, and we don't have six months. We have
virtually no time to get them out of a very, very
dangerous situation."

For much of the past decade, Guinea has been home to a
half-million refugees from its two southern neighbors,
Liberia and Sierra Leone. Although it is one of the
world's poorest countries, Guinea offered a measure of
safety for people fleeing civil wars that ravaged
those countries. About half of them settled here in a
tropical forest region called the Parrot's Beak, which
juts into Sierra Leone.

But Guinea is no longer peaceful. Since late last
year, fighting among at least six different rebel
groups and the armies of all three countries has
turned the area into a virtual free-fire zone where
established refugee camps have been razed, according
to fleeing refugees and relief workers who have
visited the area recently.

Diplomats and military officials say the escalation of
fighting could have dire consequences for a part of
Africa that has been plagued by wars and civil strife
since the late 1980s. The conflict threatens to
destabilize the government of Guinean President
Lansana Conte, jeopardizes the fragile peace process
in Sierra Leone and has brought war back to Liberia, a
country that has been at peace for four years. It is
also spurring an expensive arms race among
impoverished countries.

Because of growing security concerns, humanitarian
organizations pulled out of the border camps in recent
months. A few still work from the town of Kissidougou,
about 20 miles north of here.

Last week, Soren Jessen-Petersen, assistant U.N. High
Commissioner for Refugees, called the refugee crisis
here the "most serious" the U.N. refugee agency is
facing; on Sunday, Ruud Lubbers, the head of the U.N.
agency, visited this camp and another and said it is
time to acknowledge that the area is "in a situation
of war. Lubbers said he is seeking to persuade all
sides in the conflict to allow a "humanitarian
corridor" to be opened to allow the refugees out and
relief supplies in. "We have seen enough misery for
the hundreds of thousands of people here," Lubbers
said.

As they flee, many of the displaced thousands are
finding scant refuge deeper in Guinea. President Conte
stirred up a violent backlash against the foreigners
in September, when, following attacks on Guinean
troops by a rebel group, he demanded that all refugees
be expelled as rebels and authorized civilian
militiamen to serve as vigilantes in the camps.

"We are not rebels; we are refugees who have run away
from the rebels already once," an angry May Katah of
Sierra Leone said at nearby Massakoungou camp. "What
army goes to fight with pregnant women? With children
strapped to their backs? With bundles on their heads?
Not one."

Moses Kiki, like most people interviewed here, fled to
Guinea in 1998 when the civil war in Sierra Leone
entered a particularly brutal phase -- the rebel
Revolutionary United Front's "Operation No Living
Thing." From February to April of that year, the RUF
burned villages, raped women, kidnapped children to
serve as soldiers and hacked off the arms and legs of
thousands of civilians in eastern Sierra Leone, an
area abutting the Parrot's Beak.

"So you see, our suffering has been big and our
struggle abundant," said Kiki, cradling one of his
five young children while his wife tried to nurse a
baby whose eyes were covered with yellow fluid. "We
lived in the war, we fled the war, and now the war has
come back to us."

Intelligence analysts and military sources say it is
difficult to assess the size and strength of each
armed group in the region. The most visible force is
the Guinean army, which recently purchased several
Russian helicopter gunships and hired Ukrainian crews
to fly them, sources said. The gunships have been used
to inflict heavy casualties on rebel groups, but
civilians also have come under fire. The town of
Gueckedou, 15 miles south of here, has been reduced to
rubble in the past week as the gunships repeatedly
strafed the area to drive out rebels.

The Guinean army is allied with a Liberian guerrilla
force known as ULIMO-K, which is seeking to overthrow
Liberian President Charles Taylor, sources said. In
recent weeks ULIMO-K -- which fought Taylor's rebel
group during Liberia's 1989-97 civil war and sought
sanctuary in Guinea when that war ended and Taylor was
elected president -- has split into at least three
factions, one of which is now fighting the other two
and is responsible for much of the recent mayhem, the
sources said.

Taylor has sent Liberian troops into Guinea to fight
ULIMO-K, the sources said, and his troops also have
battled the Guinean army. In addition, Taylor has
pressured RUF rebels in Sierra Leone -- with whom he
is allied -- to stage incursions into Guinea to tie
down Guinean troops, they said. Like the Guineans,
Taylor has purchased two combat-capable Russian
helicopters and hired Ukrainian crews.

The RUF, in turn, is allied with several dozen
well-trained, experienced Guinean army officers and
several hundred troops who are seeking to overthrow
the Conte government, the sources said.

"You have an alphabet soup of organizations and people
claiming to represent organizations in a deadly
combination," said a foreign intelligence source. "Who
has command and control? Who is really calling the
shots on any side? Are a lot of them just bandits in
the region? We don't know."

Such a volatile, confusing situation makes opening a
humanitarian refugee corridor as proposed by Lubbers
extremely difficult, sources said. Lubbers said he is
willing to talk with anyone, including the RUF, to
plead for safe passage for the refugees.

The U.N. refugee agency is able to move about only
1,000 to 1,500 people a day from here to Albadaria
camp, 110 miles to the north. The people being moved,
under heavy Guinean military guard, are those most at
risk -- pregnant women, the sick, mothers with
infants. The refugees say that is simply not fast
enough, and most are demanding to be sent home.

"We would rather die at home than die here," said Amad
Jollo, a Sierra Leonean who escaped the border area
with his wife but is separated from three small
children who he said fled into the bush when shooting
started. "We say please, in God's name, take us home."

But U.N. and relief officials say the majority of them
cannot go home because they come from areas of Sierra
Leone still controlled by the RUF and there is only
limited capacity elsewhere in Sierra Leone to absorb
them. So far, about 22,000 people have been
voluntarily repatriated to Sierra Leone. Most paid
heavy bribes to Guinean troops manning roadblocks to
reach Conakry, Guinea's capital, where they were taken
by ferry to Freetown, the Sierra Leonean capital.
Those arriving at Freetown have been taken to camps
near the town of Waterloo, 20 miles southwest of the
city, where they are being housed in hastily erected
plastic tents.

Several refugees displayed safe conduct passes they
had bought for about $2 from Guinean soldiers to pass
through roadblocks. An additional bribe had to be paid
at each roadblock, dozens of refugees said. Many said
all their clothes and other belongings also were
taken.

"Our situation in Guinea and getting here was very,
very terrible, and there was fighting all around,"
refugee Tamba Buma Saidu said last week at Lumpa camp
in Sierra Leone. "The Guineans say because we brought
the war to Guinea, we will suffer too. So they took
everything we had."

© 2001 The Washington Post Company

THE GUINEA CONFLICT EXPLAINED (BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_1167000/1167811.stm

Although the violence has only recently moved
to Guinean soil, the country has been affected
by, and involved in, the conflict from the very
start.

When Charles Taylor - now Liberian president,
but then an obscure rebel leader - launched
his rebellion at Christmas 1989, he did so very
close to the Guinean border, in the mineral-rich
area where Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and
the Ivory Coast all meet.

[SIERRA LEONE] REBELS SUPPORT GUINEA [HUMANITARIAN]
CORRIDOR (BBC) --
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_1168000/1168598.stm

UN TO PUSH LIBERIA ON REFUGEE SAFETY (BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_1171000/1171872.stm

ROW WITH FIFA THREATENS [GUINEA NATIONAL SOCCER
TEAM'S] PLAY IN NATIONS CUP FINAL (African Soccer
Magazine via allafrica.com)
http://allafrica.com/stories/200102150089.html

A ban by soccer's international governing body, Fifa, on the Guinean
football federation ("Feguifoot") will take effect tomorrow, with
potentially severe consequences, unless the Conakry government
reverses its January 28 dissolution of the Feguifoot executive.

GUINEA-FIFA ROW INTENSIFIES - Guinea risks world
soccer ban if gov't doesn't reinstate dismissed soccer
federation
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport/hi/english/football/africa/newsid_1194000/1194234.stm

MEDIA RIGHTS' GROUP DEMANDS JOURNALIST'S RELEASE (PANA
via allafrica.com)
http://allafrica.com/stories/200102150023.html

A press rights group, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), has
demanded the release of editor Aboubacar Sakho of the Guinean
weekly, "The New Observer," after he was sentenced Wednesday in
Conakry to six months in prison for publishing an article critical of a
ministerial decision.

Guinea's Justice Minister Abou Camara lodged a complaint against
Sakho after the publication on 15 January of an article criticising a
decision he made to relieve magistrates of their duties.

The New Observer contended that the appointment of magistrates and
their dismissals were the responsibilities of the president alone.

The RSF said it wrote a letter to President Lansana Conte to protest
against Sakho's conviction and a fine of one million Guinean francs
(762 euro) imposed on him.

AFRICAN MEDIA MATCH (BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_1173000/1173377.stm

LE HCR AUX PRISES AVEC LA CATASTROPHE HUMANITAIRE QUI
MENACE LE SUD-EST DE LA GUINEE (Le Monde) - Sorry, I
don't have time to translate this
http://www.lemonde.fr/article/0,5987,3212--148252-,00.html

FIRE DISRUPTS TELEPHONE SERVICES IN CONAKRY (PANA via
allafrica.com)
http://allafrica.com/stories/200102200187.html

Conakry, Guinea

Fire has disrupted telephone services in Conakry, affecting several
hundred subscribers in Conakry II, a section of the Guinean capital
since Saturday, the state-run Telecommunication Company said on
Monday. The fire damaged underground cables, which were not
adequately covered, according to Martin Camara, a technician at the
company, who added that the damage would be repaired in three
days.

UNEASY CALM RETURNS TO [GUECKEDOU] (PANA via
allafrica.com)
http://allafrica.com/stories/200102200360.html

A team of the UNHCR relief workers Monday visited Guinea's
embattled town of Gueckedou bordering Liberia and Sierra Leone,
from where they withdrew 14 February when it came under heavy
armed attacks.

The visit followed an announcement by Guinean military authorities
that they last week flushed out the attackers and recaptured
Gueckedou.

The battle destroyed residential buildings, administrative installations
and all business centres, according to witnesses.

Meanwhile, Guinean Prime Minister Lamine Sidime on Monday held
discussions with ambassadors of the five permanent member states
of the UN Security Council regarding the situation in Guinea, which
has been under armed attacks since 1 September 2000, state radio
reported.

AID BREAKTHROUGH IN GUINEA (BBC) - First WFP food
reaches Gueckedou region in months
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/newsid_1191000/1191250.stm

The UN's relief agency, the World Food
Programme (WFP), says that a convoy of 11
trucks reached the Parrot's Beak area in
southern Guinea.

United Nations officials
described the delivery
by local charities as a
"breakthrough".

IMMUNISATION CAMPAIGN (UN via allafrica.com)
http://allafrica.com/stories/200102240012.html

UNICEF also said a UNICEF/FAO assessment identified a dramatic
increase in Guinea's malnutrition rate which is now 9-15 percent. The
UN agency said every effort would be made to reduce the rate. It said
the nutritional status of children aged 0-3 years would be evaluated
while adequate micro-nutrients and other supplies such as therapeutic
milk would be given to pregnant women, and malnourished and/or
unaccompanied children.

GOVERNEMENT DISAPPOINTED BY ECOWAS STAND ON LIBERIA
(UN via allafrica.com)
http://allafrica.com/stories/200102240013.html

Foreign minister N'Mah Hawa Bangoura is quoted by Guineenews, an
online news service, as saying at a meeting on Thursday with
diplomats accredited to Guinea that her government felt sanctions
should be applied as quickly as possible. She said Guinea would not
oppose the deployment of ECOWAS peacekeepers along its border
with Sierra Leone and Liberia. However, it felt they should not be
neutral but have a peace-enforcing role.

WOMEN SOLICIT RELIEF FOR ARMY, WAR AFFECTED PERSONS
(PANA via allafrica.com)
http://allafrica.com/stories/200102220059.html

The minister of social affairs, Mariama Haribo launched the campaign,
saying it was necessary for Guinean women and their sisters from
other nationalities living in Guinea to show massive concern for the
army, displaced persons and refugees facing difficult moments in the
country.

Harobo urged women to massively contribute in kind or cash, to the
initiative, which she said, would be conducted nationwide until 31
March.

GUINEA IN CRISIS AS AREA'S REFUGEES POUR IN (NY
Times) -- Made Saturday's front page, I'm told
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/24/world/24GUIN.html

KISSIDOUGOU, Guinea, Feb. 20
— This country's border runs
straight and true through the forest before
dipping sharply inside Sierra Leone south
of here. That spit of land, known by the
lovely name of Parrot's Beak, has
become the focus of a widening war in
West Africa and home to what United
Nations officials describe as the world's
worst refugee crisis.

Parrot's Beak begins where the borders
of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia
intersect, as do conflicts in the three
countries. It has become the haven for as
many as 140,000 refugees who have
been pushed there by fighting in Sierra
Leone and Liberia.

GUINEA COUNTRY REPORT ON HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES (US
State Department)
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2000/af/index.cfm?docid=806

OPPOSITION LEADER CALLS FOR END TO GUINEA-LIBERIA WAR
(UN via allafrica.com)
http://allafrica.com/stories/200102260441.html

NIGERIA FACE GUINEA IN U-17 [AFRICAN NATIONS' CUP
SOCCER] FINAL [VS NIGERIA] - Team qualifies
automatically for the Under-17 World Cup in Sept.
unless... (see next article)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport/hi/english/football/africa/newsid_1193000/1193012.stm

LATEST HEALTH NEWS FROM GUINEA (WHO via allafrica.com)
http://allafrica.com/stories/200102280181.html

There have been no outbreaks of epidemic disease, but steady
increase in cases of simple and bloody diarrhoea as numbers of
people increase in the camp. But the technical skill level of NGO and
local staff to cope with a major epidemic is a constant concern -
training for both Guinean and refugee staff could be lifesaving.

Pressure on water supplies due to the rapid movement of people into
the new camp is also worrying health workers. Risks of waterborne
epidemics are likely to increase if people are either unable to maintain
good hygiene through lack of water, or have to resort to less clean
sources. Support is needed to stockpile therapy, ensure staff are well
trained in effective treatment, and maintain alert surveillance, not just in
the camps but in the surrounding areas, which are also under pressure
from internally displaced people.

And with the rainy season in the horizon, there are growing concerns
about the control of mosquito-born disease - including Falciparum
malaria and yellow fever with the coming of the rainy season. Vector
control will be a priority. None of the refugees have nets.

Measles Outbreak of 15 cases last week/ 7 deaths in Guendenbou,
20-30km northeast of Guekedou among IDP and host population.
Outbreaks are also occurring in the Faranah region where there are
over 15,000 IDPs crammed in with host population. Immunization
campaigns have begun to try and contain this common childhood
disease that can become a killer in crowded, vulnerable populations.

The Parrot's Beak Food distributions have started in the Parrot's
Beak, but access for health care remains limited to erratic supply of
essential drugs. Particular concerns are: the difficulty people stranded
in the Beak have in getting to hospital care with the hospital in
Guekedou out of action and the route to Kissidougou, long and fraught
with problems, and the ability to protecting people from outbreaks of
infectious disease, which take even greater toll on the hungry.

Hilary Bower Field Information Officer Emergency and Humanitarian
Action Department World Health Organization, Geneva Email:
[email protected] or [email protected] Website:
www.who.int/eha/disasters Ph: +41 22 791 2454 Mobile: +41 79 249
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