14 - 20 January 2008
HIGHLIGHTS
- Health authorities contain outbreak of acute watery / cholera in Maryland and Grand Kru Counties
Update on Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF)
Reports from implementing partners and monitoring visits established that implementation of CERF-funded projects has reached 30% completion since November 2007 for all six on-going projects. Thus far, a clinic has been rehabilitated in a town that has had no health facility for nearly a decade in Montserrado County. The clinic will serve over 20,000 persons in the town and catchment area. In remote River Cess County (southern Liberia), CERF partners rehabilitated six wells and trained forty community-based organizations in participatory mobilization for water, sanitation and hygiene activities. Residents of Sinoe County in the south-east also received 16 reconditioned wells to provide safe drinking water. UNFPA distributed a consignment of rape kits at several health facilities.
Overall, projects are on schedule for completion by the revised completion date of 30 June 2008.
Update on acute watery diarrhoea / cholera in southeast Liberia
The latest assessment of the outbreak of acute watery diarrhoea/cholera in Maryland and Grand Kru Counties indicate that the situation has stabilized and is under control. There is an improvement in information collection and dissemination. Improved collaboration between health authorities, NGOs and the UN has increased the effectiveness of response.
According to the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, improving treatment facilities in the two counties is a challenge that will determine the effectiveness of response to future outbreaks. Unconfirmed reports that some cases of acute watery diarrhoea may have been registered in River Gee County (which borders Maryland County) have led to intensification of contingency planning in neighbouring Grand Gedeh County. The health facilities in River Gee County lack adequate drugs and supplies to respond to outbreaks.
Pilot birth certificate scheme for Ivorian refugee children
UNHCR is piloting a scheme to issue birth certificates to Ivorian refugee children born in Liberia. If successful, the scheme will help these children to receive birth certificates from the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare. The birth certificates would enable children to determine and prove their nationality upon their return to Cote d'Ivoire. Already, the Ivorian Ambassador to Liberia has expressed her country's willingness to support the initiative to document Ivorian refugee children.
There are 6,735 Ivorian refugees in Liberia, many of whom reside in a UNHCR-supported camp in Nimba County in northeast Liberia. The local office of the Ministry of Health & Social Welfare in Nimba has already commenced the registration of Ivorian refugee children born between 2003 and present in Liberia for possible issuance of birth certificates.