400 dead in floods in South Kivu: Denis Mukwege calls for them to be offered a "dignified burial"
Torrential rains are responsible for the death of 400 people and the disappearance of more than 1000 others in South Kivu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
On the night of May 4-5, torrential rains fell in the Kalehe region of South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They caused the flooding of four rivers and landslides. The balance sheet is tragic, more than 400 dead, and it could still increase because more than 1000 people are still missing. May 8 was declared national day of mourning.
France sends a message of solidarity to the Democratic Republic of the Congo after the terrible floods which have mourned South Kivu. Our thoughts are with the victims and their families.@MinColonna @AmbaFranceDRC pic.twitter.com/JO5wgyer6j
- France Diplomatie🇫🇷🇪🇺 (@francediplo) May 7, 2023
The Christian organization tearfund is on hand to meet the needs of victims. Hebdavi Kyeya, his spokesman for the DRC, expressed the difficulty of going to the disaster areas.
"Tearfund struggled to reach this location, it took our team at least two days before they could find a way to reach this area. Due to landslides, collapsed bridges, the team was trying a certain route and they couldn't get there. Eventually they had to go across the lake by boat."
“It is really a time of mourning, but also a time when we must act in order to be able to support the people who have been affected by this crisis”, he added before specifying, “if we do not do something very quickly, then more people will die."
Hebdavi Kyeya explains that the sanitary and water-related infrastructures have been swept away by the floods. He deplores the risk of cholera and malnutrition.
As rescue operations continue, the bodies are buried in mass graves. Images circulating on social networks shock the population. Denis Mukwege, Nobel Peace Prize, spoke on this subject, asking for a "worthy burial". He calls for "exhuming the bodies, identifying them by DNA, burying them individually and not in a mass grave" and asks the ministerial delegation from Kin to "ensure that this is done".
In a previous communicated, he had congratulated "the provincial authorities for having taken the measure of the tragedy".
"I encourage them to quickly materialize their promises, in particular: to cover funeral expenses, to support the care of the wounded in hospitals, to mobilize urgent aid in food and other essential products, to relocate the inhabitants of the sites dangerous and contribute to their decent relocation, to classify certain sites unsuitable for construction to avoid new tragedies in the future, to urgently rehabilitate the Bukavu-Goma and Bukavu-Hombo roads in order to facilitate the movement of people and goods and to mobilize the central government in Kinshasa so that it quickly assumes its responsibilities in this tragedy."
Denis Mukwege added that a “team of surgeons and anesthesiologists and technicians from the hospital and the Panzi Foundation” had been dispatched to the scene.
"Lastly, in consultation with the health authorities, certain administrative and customary authorities and certain religious leaders of our province, we dispatched a team of surgeons and anesthesiologists and technicians from the hospital and the Panzi Foundation to the scene. with the aim of providing populations with emergency medical aid consisting of kits of essential medicines.
MC
