ICTR to fight genocide trauma

People suffering from trauma due to the 1994 Genocide could benefit from an International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) physiotherapy service. A team of forty-one ICTR personnel in Kigali have acquired psycho-trauma debriefing training on how to interact with witnesses and victims of the horrendous murders. Lack of proper skills to deal with the traumatised people does not only harm the victims, but also health workers who attend to them, a psychotherapy expert said. Dr Naasson Munyandamutsa, a psychiatrist from National University of Rwanda (NUR), emphasised that mental stability is vital to every personnel before and after active service. “Conducting debriefing allows a more complete cure of a traumatic event and reducing its magnitude to the victim,” Munyandamutsa told participants yesterday at a one-day ICTR organised psycho-trauma debriefing workshop at Hotel Novotel Umubano. In his one-hour long presentation on “How to take care of oneself”, Munyandamutsa said that talking about event in a spontaneous and authentic language enables the subject to clear an emerging traumatic situation.Ends