Ituri: about 40 maternal and infant deaths reported in the Nyakunde health zone due to lack of ambulance.

At least 33 pregnant women and 7 newborns died between 2022 and 2024 in the Nyakunde health zone due to a lack of ambulances for emergency transport.

The head of the Gender, Family, and Child office of the Andissoma chiefdom, Noëlla Nyangoma, who provided these figures last week, calls on the Government to provide the hospital with an ambulance to reverse this trend.

The health authorities of the general hospital of Nyakunde also acknowledge cases of maternal and infant mortality due to the lack of transport means for transferring some serious cases.

Doctor Gédéon Malanda, chief doctor at the general hospital of Nyakunde, states that these women typically come from localities where the state of the roads is appalling. This exacerbates their situations. He wishes to see this medical facility equipped with an ambulance for the transport of patients coming from different localities of the chiefdoms of Mobala, Sota, Andisoma, and even the city of Bunia.

They are mostly women who could not reach the hospital or arrived there too late.

In the absence of an ambulance, they use bicycles or motorcycles to get to the hospital, laments Noëlla Nyangoma:

“Among these women, some try to make it to the maternity ward on foot or by motorcycle. But you know, for a woman about to give birth and who is transported on a bicycle, there are two risks: either she loses her life or it's her baby who dies due to the jolts.”