Following an initial delivery of medical supplies to Kenema on 22 March, the ICRC provided the town's government hospital with a second consignment of medicines on 2 April to help treat emergency cases. The hospital reported that 40 operations had been performed on war- wounded patients since the end of February.

On 31 March, for the first time since delegates suspended their activities up-country owing to the recent fighting, an ICRC team returned to Bo, Sierra Leone's second largest town. Contacts were re-established with local authorities in order to gather information on the situation in terms of nutrition, health and water supplies. ICRC delegates also visited detainees held by ECOMOG forces and gave them blankets and items for personal hygiene.

Thanks to cooperation with the Sierra Leone Red Cross Society (SLRCS), Red Cross messages can now be delivered to areas outside Freetown, such as Bo, Moyamba, Makeni, Port Loko and Lungi, so that family members can stay in touch despite the interruption of normal channels of communication.

As the fighting died down in the northern provinces, rehabilitation work resumed last week on 55 wells in Bombali district and Port Loko town. Wells are the only source of drinking water for the inhabitants of some villages, and ICRC water and sanitation engineers together with Ministry of Health staff are working against the clock to complete the project before the start of the rainy season.

In the first three months after the fighting ended in Freetown, five primary health-care clinics receiving ICRC support gave consultations to 40,000 patients and immunized 850 children in accordance with EPI (WHO's Expanded Programme on Immunization) standards. During the same period the ICRC, working in cooperation with the SLRCS, distributed a total of 483 tonnes of food to 36,877 people in the capital.