Activities in crisis situations

The organisation has also proven its credibility in crisis situations, such as our brief intervention after the Mount Nyiragongo eruption in Goma in 2002 and also in Goma from 2007, helping displaced people fleeing the fighting between different armed groups. Handicap International put in place inpatient physiotherapy projects in the region’s hospitals and respiratory physiotherapy services for malnourished children in therapeutic feeding centres. Most of the refugee camps around Goma were closed at the end of 2009, so our organisation then decided to support people with disabilities returning home, particularly through the use of mobile physiotherapy clinics. Handicap International even went one step further, managing to incorporate the treatment of people with disabilities into the emergency services provided by all the humanitarian agencies. This course of action involved concrete measures such as providing appropriate sanitary facilities, but also offered more global organisational responses to the treatment of people with disabilities.