Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Congo
Margaret Aguirre
Director, Global Communications
310.826.7800 office
310.430.3215 mobile
maguirre@InternationalMedicalCorps.org
Rebecca Milner
Vice President, Institutional Advancement
202.828.5155 office
202.340.1476 mobile
rmilner@InternationalMedicalCorps.org
September 1, 2010 ‐ Los Angeles, CA – Six members of International Medical Corps’ staff are safe after
their plane was attacked by gunmen Wednesday in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
The team of three expatriates was arriving by plane, with another expatriate and two nationals waiting
to pick them up in Walikale, in North Kivu Province. The group was there to assess the situation
following a recent incident of mass rapes in the nearby village of Luvungi. Upon landing, their plane was
fired upon and the group fled the immediate area by foot.
After the shooting had ceased they were able to walk out of the bush where they were hiding,
approximately five kilometers away. Local guides and a national staff member located and helped
retrieve them.
UN peacekeepers and representatives of the U.N. Office of Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs
(OCHA) arranged for their safe return to Goma.
International Medical Corps has worked in the DRC since 1999 to provide health care and training
services, nutrition, food security, sexual and gender‐based violence prevention and treatment, and
water/sanitation services. International Medical Corps supports 85 health facilities in the DRC, including
forty‐two in North Kivu, forty‐one in South Kivu, and two in Maniema. In total, International Medical
Corps has served more than one million people in Congo, 80 percent of them displaced by war.
Since its inception more than 25 years ago, International Medical Corps’ mission has been consistent:
relieve the suffering of those impacted by war, natural disaster, and disease, by delivering vital health
care services that focus on training. This approach of helping people help themselves is critical to
returning devastated populations to self‐reliance. For more information visit:
www.InternationalMedicalCorps.org