ogramme with the aid of an Angolan agronomist and airlifted some 800 tonnes of maize seed. Together with 500 tonnes of beans to plant, they will be distributed to all the people living where the ICRC is at work.
From October to December, the nutritional state of the people declined, because this period of the year comes between two harvests. Food distributions were resumed in October in most of the communities in the provinces of Huambo and Benguela and in November in the province of Bié. In November, 1,402 tonnes were distributed to 153,000 recipients; in December the food aid supplied to 171,000 people came to 1,576 tonnes.
Supply and security problems
In 1985, 15 relief consignments arrived in Angola by sea: 20,000 tonnes of food, 800 tonnes of seed, 70,000 blankets, 120 tonnes of clothes, also soap and other supplies.
From the ports of Luanda, Lobito and Namibe, the goods and fuel must be unloaded and stored to be airlifted later to the Planalto by large transport aircraft such as the Hercules, stored again and then flown by Twin Otter or similar light aircraft to the communities. However, one stretch of railway line, between Lobito and the townships of Cubal and Ganda (which are relatively near), may be used, also the line between Huambo, Chinguar and Kuito.
For security reasons there are few road convoys; the roads are mined and overland travel is considered too dan-
gerous.
Conditions are unsafe everywhere. On 11 February armed men attacked the Kuito feeding centre at night, and des- troyed it. Other incidents occured in this town and the ICRC was obliged to interrupt its work there for a month. In September work had also to be suspended in the rest of the province of Bié: an ICRC plane was damaged by a mine on the landing strip at Chitembo; a local employee was killed. In November and December there were more problems: the feeding center in Kuito was again the target of armed attackers; on 22 November it was looted and dynamited. On 16 December the ICRC radio operator in the Lobito area was murdered. A warehouse marked with the red cross emblem was destroyed on 23 December dur- ing an attack on Mungo in the province of Huambo.
Medical assistance:
nutrition, hygiene, public health
The doctors, nurses and hygiene specialists from the ICRC and those provided by the Red Cross Societies of Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Portugal and Sweden are engaged in feeding programmes and preventive medicine, while at the same time dispensing specific medical care.
Since the beginning of the year 22 feeding centres were set up and treated between 5,000 and 12,000 undernourished children. Relief supplies in the form of blankets, clothes and soap were given to their parents, numbering between 73,000 and 95,000. At the end of June most of these centres were closed for a time with the exception of two situated in the provincial capitals of Huambo and Bié.
Angola: a nurse tends a patient with gunshot wounds from an attack in the Bailundo region (Yannick Müller)
In July and August the number of undernourished chil- dren decreased and only 500 to 600 children received treatment; the parents numbered 18,800.
By September, the numbers were again up and by the end of the year more than one thousand children were being treated in these centres.
Prisoners released by UNITA
On 16 March, UNITA (the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) released 27 prisoners and handed them over to the ICRC in the south of Angola. Among these prisoners were 17 Filipinos, two Americans, three Bri- tons (captured during the attack on the mining centre at Kafunfo) and five Portuguese. A plane was chartered to take these people to Johannesburg, South Africa, where the ICRC handed them over to their government representatives for repatriation; the Filipinos were handed over to their employers.
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