EASTERN DRC: MSF teams in Ituri confront alarming brutality against women and children
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has witnessed a renewed spike in atrocities in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)’s Ituri province, where its medical teams are providing care for civilians with horrific injuries. In a new report released on the 25th of March 2025, titled “Risking Their Lives to Survive,” MSF underscores the extreme needs of many communities endangered by recent attacks, increased displacement and reduced humanitarian aid.
For decades, people in Ituri – in the northeast of DRC – have been both direct targets and treated as collateral damage in a complex conflict characterised by violence, ethnic divisions, and the participation of various armed groups. This conflict has also greatly hampered access to healthcare and the means for families to feed themselves, while the restricted provision of humanitarian aid has caused further suffering among a population that already gets little international attention.
MSF calls on all state and non-state armed groups in Ituri to spare civilians as well as healthcare facilities, which are sanctuaries essential to the survival of local communities. Violence in Ituri has displaced around 100,000 people since the beginning of the year, according to the UN.1 In January and February alone, it also reported an intensification of violence against civilians, with attacks leaving more than 200 people dead and dozens injured. In February, MSF’s medical teams treated children as young as 4 and pregnant women for machete and gunshot wounds following militia attacks in Djugu territory.
“These most recent attacks follow decades of violence and its devastating consequences for civilians, including women and children in Ituri,” said Alira Halidou, MSF head of mission in DRC. “The crisis here is characterised by repeated displacement, in which violence forces civilians to pick up and start their lives over, again and again. What is worse, is that the stories patients and communities tell us represent only the tip of the iceberg.”
Only a small proportion of people can access healthcare in Ituri, where health facilities also fall prey to attacks. In Djugu territory, the Fataki general hospital was obliged to suspend its activities and evacuate patients mid-March following armed group threats. This closure affects thousands of people left without access to medical care. In Drodro health zone, also in Djugu, nearly 50 per cent of healthcare centres have been partially or fully destroyed and have had to be relocated. When violence escalated this time last year, a patient was killed in her bed in an armed attack on Drodro’s general hospital.
Not only do these attacks make patients reluctant to go to medical facilities, but they also put medical staff at risk. One doctor interviewed for the report recounted how, when a health centre was forced to shut down for two months, he still went in to perform caesarean sections.
More than half of the 39 victims of violence MSF treated at Salama clinic, Bunia, up until mid-March 2025 were women and children. One mother, whose 4-year-old was injured, lost her 6-month-old baby and her husband during an attack wielded by machete. Two sisters, aged 4 and 16, took machete blows to the head and arms, and their mother (8 months pregnant) was also severely injured by multiple machete wounds. We treated a 9-year-old boy with a gunshot wound to the abdomen who had witnessed assailants attack and kill his mother and two siblings, by machete.
When civilians seek refuge in displacement camps, they are still not safe. In one instance in September 2024, MSF treated five civilians with bullet wounds following an attack on the Plaine Savo camp in the Fataki health zone.
When there is an upsurge in attacks against civilians, the number of victims of sexual violence coming to MSF facilities also increases. Women in particular, face attacks as they go out in search of means to feed themselves and their families.
In Drodro, in 2023 and 2024, around 84 per cent of the victims of sexual violence treated by MSF were attacked while working in fields, collecting firewood or on the road.
Despite the efforts of the Ministry of Health, MSF and other humanitarian organisations, people's needs very much exceed the resources available. Food insecurity worsened sharply in Ituri in 2024 and is now chronic for 43 per cent of the population. Poor hygiene conditions and dilapidated shelters in displacement camps mean that diarrhoeal and respiratory diseases spread easily, affecting children under 5 the most.
People in Ituri must be guaranteed safe access to healthcare and must not be forced to risk their lives in search of food and other needs.
MSF_DRC Ituri report_March 2025-ENG.pdf
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Jane Rabothata
About Doctors Without Borders (MSF)
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is a global network of principled medical and other professionals who specialise in medical humanitarian work, driven by our common humanity and guided by medical ethics. We strive to bring emergency medical care to people caught in conflicts, crises, and disasters in more than 70 countries worldwide.
In South Africa, the organisation is recognised as one of the pioneers of providing Antiretroviral Treatment (ART) in the public sector and started the first HIV programmes in South Africa in 1999. Until today, the focus of MSF’s interventions in the country has primarily been on developing new testing and treatment strategies for HIV/AIDS and TB in Eshowe (Kwa-Zulu Natal) and Khayelitsha (Western Cape).
In Tshwane, we run a migration project, and we offer medical and psychosocial care to migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, who struggle to access public health services under South Africa’s increasingly restrictive.
Previously we offered free, high-quality, confidential medical care to survivors of SGBV in Rustenburg.
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