As the DRC shut down to prevent the spread of Covid-19, access to food and healthcare was limited for infected people, orphans and the elderly.

Through a Norad-funded project, they received emergency and long-term food aid from Caritas.

In 2020 and 2021, the country was hit by four waves of infection and was shut down for six months. At the same time, the number of food insecure people rose to a record high. In the Covid-19 project, the goal was to meet acute needs in the country's five most vulnerable regions by:

1. Strengthen local health services through coordination, training and materials, as well as raising awareness of Covid-19 among healthcare professionals and the local population to slow the spread of the virus.
2. Strengthen the immune system of patients, their relatives and medical staff by distributing food rations.
3. Strengthen food security for particularly vulnerable groups through food distribution to orphans and the elderly, as well as seed distribution and training in sustainable farming techniques for women.

Good results

In addition to vulnerable elderly, women and orphans, healthcare professionals and patients were helped in the project, which has reaped great results. Here are some examples:

• 234 healthcare professionals and 1236 family members of corona patients received food rations during treatment or while in quarantine.
• 711 orphans and elderly people improved their food security with seeds and training on effective ways to cultivate the land so that they could get more from their crops. They were also trained to redistribute their home-grown vegetables and help sell them at local supermarkets.
• Acute malnutrition was prevented in 4,000 cases - in children under five, pregnant and breastfeeding women, and among people living with diseases such as HIV and tuberculosis.

Prevented from growing their own food

- Elderly women in Goma, North Kivu, were particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, as the city was hard hit by infection and isolated elderly people could not grow food themselves. Therefore, food aid was particularly important to them.

Senior Advisor Heidi Solheim Nordbeck in Caritas Norway

Several local organizations have also received food aid as part of the project. This is because they were severely affected by the closed border with Rwanda. The aid not only covered their acute needs during the pandemic, but has also strengthened the food security of the women and their households in the longer term.

- We now sell our own juice to local supermarkets and have rented a larger area of land where we can grow our food," the leader of the women's organization said happily when she met Solheim in Bakavu.