News by Doctors Without Borders
Honduras: MSF Tackles Dengue Outbreak
Honduras 2010 © Juan Carlos Tomasi
An MSF staff member attends to a child in San Felipe Hospital in Tegucigalpa.
Due to an alarming increase in cases of dengue fever in Honduras this year, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has launched an emergency intervention in Tegucigalpa, the capital, where the majority of cases have been reported. MSF is supporting local health services with a three-pronged approach that focuses on medical care, vector control, and community education.
This sort of intervention to a dengue outbreak is relatively new…
more......
DRC: Some 20 Villages Looted, Burned in South Kivu Clashes; MSF Assists Displaced and Cholera Patients
DRC 2010 © MSF
Some 25,000 people have been forced to flee thier villages in the Shabunda area of South Kivu.
Thousands of people have been forced to flee their villages in the Shabunda area of South Kivu Province, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), due to heavy fighting between the Congolese armed forces (FARDC) and other armed groups. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is responding to the urgent needs of displaced people in this isolated area by providing emergency medical care, as well as treatment for cholera patients.…
more......
[Podcast] Starved for Attention
How the international food aid system is failing children; and how MSF's multimedia campaign, Starved for Attention, aims to spur public awareness and push international food aid donors to make their food nutritionally adequate for young children. Sign the Starved for Attention petition to rewrite the story of malnutrition.
more......
PAKISTAN: MSF Expands Emergency Reponse Into New Flood Zones
Pakistan 2010 © Jean-Marc Jacobs/MSF
MSF water distribution point in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
TOTAL FIGURES
Since the beginning of the flooding in Pakistan, MSF has:
Distributed 24,834 non-food item kits
Distributed 6,801 tents
Performed 27,151 medical consultations
Set up 7 diarrhea treatment centers
Built 258 latrines
Installed 11 Oral Rehydration Salt points
And now MSF is:
Conducting 12 mobile clinics
Distributing 718,000 litres of clean, safe water per day
MSF’s existing and flood…
more......
[Voice from the Field] Ethiopia: Providing Care in the Somali Region
© MSF
MSF is the only organization working to provide people with free, good quality healthcare in the area. To get the treatment they need, people come from villages nearly 60 km (37 miles) away.
In August 2009, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) started working in Imey, in the Somali region of Ethiopia. For nearly a year now, together with personnel from the Regional Bureau of Health, MSF staff have been running a primary health care center in East Imey and supporting another in West Imey.
Separated…
more......
[Slideshow] MSF Aids Victims of DRC Tanker Fire
[Video] Pakistan: MSF Works to Aid Displaced People in Sindh Province
Somalia: Amid Intense Fighting in Mogadishu, MSF Treats 127 Wounded in Three Days
Somalia 2008 © Jehad Nga
In 2008, woman displaced by the kind of fighting raging again today in Mogadishu waited for food that was being distributed by a local NGO.
With intense fighting raging in Mogadishu, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) medical teams treated 127 casualties in Daynile Hospital in the three-day period between Monday, August 23 and Thursday, August 25. This is by far the largest influx of wounded people MSF hospitals have taken in since the beginning of the year, a result of the substantial escalation…
more......
Pakistan: MSF Increases Flood Response And Looks to Expand Services Further
Pakistan 2010 © Ton Koene
A boy stands in a home wrecked by the flooding in Pakistan.
Relief kits distributed: 14,675 kits to 14,675 families
or approximately 102,725 people
Tents distributed: 4,855
Clean water distribution per day: over 540,000 liters
Water Access Points: 52
Consultations in hospitals and mobile clinics: 16,664
Mobile clinics: 14
3 in Dera Murad Jamali
1 in Khabula
1 in Sobhatpur (Baluchistan)
1 in Malakand
1 in Swat
1 in Lower…
more......
[Voice from the Field] Pakistan: "Our Doctors Are Working Around the Clock"
Pakistan 2010 © Jean-Marc Jacobs/MSF
An MSF water distribution point in northern Pakistan.
We’ve been running a number of mobile clinics in Fadfedar canal, in the areas around Manjoshori, and in Khabula, where the people we struggled to reach not long ago are now relatively accessible.
Here in Dera Murad Jamali (DMJ) we are treating a lot of watery diarrhea and we’ve begun to support obstetric emergency in the hospital. The number of women needing consultations has really increased and the doctors are working 24 hours. We’re seeing…
more......
[Podcast] Preventing mother-to-child HIV in Uganda
Less than 100 babies contract HIV from their mothers in US every year, while 18,000 known cases occur in Uganda. We visit one MSF-supported program to prevent such transmission, in Madi Opei.
more......
[Video] Pakistan: MSF Working to Reduce Risk of Epidemics
[Video] Pakistan: Millions of People Left Homeless
Southern Sudan: Spike in Kala Azar Cases Spurs Expansion of MSF Response
Sudan 2009 © Jenn Warren
Last year also saw a spike in kala azar cases in Jonglei State. A mother helped care for her infected 24-year-old son at an MSF kala azar clinic.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has set up an additional base in Pagil, in Jonglei State, Southern Sudan, to deal with an alarming increase in the number of patients infected with kala azar—or visceral leishmaniasis.
The new clinic comes in addition to MSF project sites in Leer, Lankien, and Nasir, as well as health…
more......
[Video] Pakistan: Providing Water in Mingora, Swat Valley
[Voice from the Field] MSF Brings Aid to Thousands of Trapped People in Baluchistan
© MSF
Dr. James Kambaki
This story from James Kambaki, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) project coordinator in Baluchistan Province, follows a previous story where he described discovering thousands of people stranded without any help in the area of Khabula.
“We managed to get back to Khabula a few days ago to help thousands of people stuck on a small strip of land surrounded by floodwater. Using sand and other material we’d been able to fill in a small section of the road temporarily so we…
more......
India: MSF Launches Malaria Intervention in Mumbai
India 2010 © Guillume Bonnet/MSF
MSF is providing training for local health center staff in diagnosing and treating malaria.
Following a sharp increase in malaria cases in Mumbai, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has launched a malaria intervention to help local health authorities fight the disease. On August 18, MSF teams that were already working in an HIV treatment project in Mumbai began providing 100,000 diagnostic kits and 3,700 treatment kits to 64 health centers in the city. MSF will also provide training for health center staff in…
more......
[Voice from the Field] In Haiti, Spared an Eclampsia Crisis
Haiti 2010 © MSF
MSF patient Crisla Florestal recovers in Isaïe Jeanty Hospital in Port-au-Prince.
"I developed eclampsia the day before I delivered and I realize that's serious," said Crisla Florestal, 19, who was readmitted a day after giving birth at the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital Isaïe Jeanty, in Port-au-Prince.
Crisla gave birth to twin girls following major complications. "They are so pretty, but I can't take care of them yet. I have too much pain." She nods towards another woman who smiles, as if…
more......
[Podcast] Malnutrition Crisis in Chad
Food insecurity is particularly severe in areas of the Sahel region this year; MSF is conducting emergency nutrition interventions.
more......
Pakistan: The Swat Valley is Hit Hard Again
Pakistan 2010 © Jean-Marc Jacobs/MSF
MSF has set up a water bladder in an area of Mingora, the capital of Swat, where most of the population of 400,000 have been left without access to clean water.
The Swat Valley was once known as the Switzerland of Pakistan, an alpine place where families would spend weekends walking in the mountains and picnicking on beautiful river banks. Since the 2008 conflict between militants and the army migrated into the region, however, the area has been tense and violent.
Some normalcy…
more......
Pakistan: Distributions Continue Despite Logistical Challenges
Pakistan 2010 © Ton Koene
On the ruins of what used to be his home, a man lays out items received during an MSF non-food item distribution at a camp between Peshawar and Charsadda.
“I walked from Gul Bela, a village nearby, to come here,” says a woman named Farida as her five-year-old son tugs impatiently at her dress. She's in Nazirabad in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is conducting another round of relief item distributions. “I heard people talk about it around a…
more......
[Video] Pakistan: Distributing Essential Items to People Affected by Floods
[Video] Pakistan: Delivering Clean Water to Charsadda
Pakistan: Working to Avoid Disease Outbreaks
Pakistan 2010 © Ton Koene
Children collecting badly-needed clean water at an MSF water distribution point in Nowshera.
In the aftermath of a disaster that arrives as suddenly as the flooding in Pakistan did, the immediate impact—the deaths and the injuries—is usually followed by additional health risks caused by the difficult living conditions, the lack of hygiene, and the restricted access to clean water and basic health care services the disaster leaves in its wake. This is, indeed, the case in Pakistan now, and MSF and others are at…
more......
Russia: Bringing Aid to People Affected by Fires
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has provided humanitarian aid to people living in villages affected by wood fires in the Ryazan region, approximately 200 km (124 miles) from Moscow. About 2,000 people have been displaced by fires in this region. Families who lost their homes have found shelter in schools, hospitals, and other public facilities, while many others are staying with relatives and friends.
“People have serious breathing problems, everybody is suffering from itching due to allergies caused by smoke. We are in acute need of antihistamines, respirators, and drinking water,” said Irina Anatolyevna, head doctor at…
more......
Chad: Heavy Rains in the Midst of a Malnutrition Crisis
Chad 2010 © Boris Revollo/MSF
People try to access the roads in Guéra, one of six regions in Chad, in addition to the capital, N'Djamena, where MSF is running therapuetic feeding centers.
Areas in Chad have been hit by the worst flooding in more than 10 years while at the same time the country is experiencing an intense malnutrition crisis.
“The current rainy season in Chad is a curse and a blessing for the dry belt across the country,” said Dr. Kodjo Edoh, head of mission for Doctors…
more......
Get an Action Kit and Host a Starved for Attention Screening
Starved for Attention Action Kit
Host a Starved for Attention screening event in your community. The free Action Kit includes a DVD of the documentaries, fact sheets on malnutrition, a copy of the petition, and outreach materials to spread the word about your event.
Organize your community to help rewrite the story for the 195 million children around the world who suffer annually from malnutrition. Go to starvedforattention.org/actionkit to order yours. Go to starvedforattention.org to learn more about the campaign.
more......
[Slideshow] MSF Brings Emergency Aid to Pakistan
Kyrgyzstan: Ongoing Care for Victims of Violence in the South
Kyrgyzstan 2010 © Francois Dumont/MSF
Burned houses in Osh.
As the situation remains tense in Southern Kyrgyzstan, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams are providing medical care and assistance to victims of violence in the cities of Osh, Jalal-Abad and Bazar-Korgon. MSF is aiming first to address the immediate medical needs of the population. The international medical humanitarian organization is running mobile clinics in areas where people are still too scared to venture out of their communities, giving consultations to 250 to 300 people every week.
“We…
more......
Pakistan: MSF Increases Distributions in Flooded Areas as Worrying Gaps Remain
Pakistan 2010 © Jean-Marc Jacobs
A man struggles to move down a flooded street in Nowshera.
Two weeks after the first floods hit Pakistan, the situation remains extremely dire for millions of people. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan provinces, MSF is intensifying its activities, remaining focused on medical care, clean water provision, and distributions of essential goods. More assessments are also ongoing in these provinces, as well as in Punjab and Sindh provinces.
MSF teams are providing families affected by the floods with basic items and drinking water,…
more......
[Press Release] MSF Responds to the Needs of Flash Flood Victims in Jammu & Kashmir
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is providing urgently needed medical and humanitarian assistance to people in the worst affected villages in and around Leh. MSF is distributing shelter, kitchen, and hygiene kits to 2,000 of the most vulnerable families. The kits contain blankets, soap, jerry cans, some clothes, cooking items, and tarpaulins.
Flash floods in Leh have caused widespread destruction and many homes been swept away. An estimated 25,000 people are affected, with 150 deaths and hundreds of people missing.
“Despite the logistical challenges, we have managed to start distributing relief items to those most in…
more......
Somalia: MSF Begins TB Treatment Program in Rural Areas of Middle Shabelle Region
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is present in eight regions of Somalia, with more than 1,300 Somali staff providing medical care on the ground. Medical coordinator Luis Neira is part of the MSF team based in Nairobi that remotely supports operations in the war-torn country. He serves as the medical reference for projects in Mogadishu and north of the capital in Middle Shabelle region.
In several districts of Middle Shabelle, MSF has been providing basic medical care through a network of four health centers in urban and rural areas, as well as a maternity unit in…
more......
Pakistan: Ongoing Flooding Complicates Aid Effort
Pakistan 2010 © Ton Koene
A displaced family near Gulabad.
As the flooding in Pakistan spreads into new parts of the country, the rain is still falling and the water is still rising in the areas that were initially affected, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan provinces, impeding the delivery of medical and humanitarian aid. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams on the ground are both responding to the consequences of the initial days of flooding and also assessing the needs in the newly affected provinces of Punjab and Sindh.…
more......
[Podcast] Emergency Response to Floods in Pakistan
Responding to the floods in Pakistan, a helicopter assessment of areas cut off from aid reminded MSF's emergency coordinator of the aftermath of the 2004-2005 tsunami.
more......
[Voice from the Field] MSF Finds Thousands of Families Trapped by Flooding in Baluchistan Province
© MSF
Dr. James Kambaki
Continuous and sometimes heavy rains in Khyber Pakhtunkwa and Baluchistan provinces have significantly impeded the delivery of humanitarian aid. James Kambaki, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)project coordinator in Baluchistan Province, described what this means for MSF teams trying to reach people affected by the floods.
“We’d heard that there were a group of people around Khabula who were stuck and isolated, but we weren’t sure of exactly where they were. It took us more than two days to find them, driving around…
more......
MSF Shocked by the Killing of Humanitarian Medical Team in Afghanistan
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is shocked by the killing of a medical team from the humanitarian organization International Assistance Mission (IAM) in Badakhshan, Afghanistan. This can only detrimentally affect and undermine the work carried out by the medical community in the country, and the Afghan people relying heavily on this much-needed assistance. Our thoughts are with the families of the victims and our colleagues at IAM.
more......
Pakistan: As Flooding Continues to Wreak Havoc, MSF Increases Activities and Assesses New Areas
© REUTERS/Adrees Latif
Women wade through flood waters with their children while evacuating from Nowshera, located in Pakistan's northwest Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province August 1, 2010.
According to the official figures, the severe and unrelenting floods in Pakistan have affected 4 million people and 1,600 people have died. Although water is receding in some areas, it is increasing in others as the rain continues to fall, and the needs of people who had to leave their homes are growing increasingly urgent. The response of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is…
more......
Pakistan: "We are far from having a complete picture of people's needs"
Dr. Awais Yaqub is a Pakistani doctor and a deputy medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Pakistan. He is currently working in Charsadda, one of the districts hardest hit by the floods.
What is the situation like today in Charsadda district?
Many houses in the district were flooded and half of the town of Charsadda itself was flooded. Many people sought refuge on the rooftops of buildings surrounded by water. Those strong enough swam to dry land, where they could do nothing but wait for the rest of their families, women and children…
more......
[Alert] Spring 2010
Pakistan: MSF Providing Services to Flood Victims, Supporting Local Health Centers, Assessing Needs
Pakistan 2010 © MSF
An MSF distribution point in Baktirabad, Baluchistan province, northwest Pakistan.
According to official figures, more than 3 million people have been directly affected and more than 1,500 have died in the floods that have ravaged two northern provinces in Pakistan. More rains are expected in the coming days and could cause renewed flooding and create problems in areas that have up until now been unaffected. But some areas initially affected are becoming more accessible as some of the water recedes.
While delivering much-needed medical…
more......
[Voice from the Field] Somali Refugees in Ethiopia
Ethiopia 2010 © MSF
MSF staff attends to a child in Dolo Ado.
MSF has been providing care to more than 30,000 Somali refugees in Dolo Ado woreda, or administrative division, of the Liben zone, in the Somali region of Ethiopia, since February 2009. Ongoing violence and intolerable living conditions in Somalia drove them to make the difficult journey across the Ethiopian border. On their arrival at the Dolo Ado transit camp, they receive medical care before moving on to the Boqolmayo and Malkadida refugee camps, where MSF provides…
more......
Kyrgyzstan: Many "too frightened to seek medical care�
Tensions remain high in southern Kyrgyzstan, where hundreds of people were killed and thousands wounded during clashes between Kyrgyz and Uzbek communities in mid-June. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams are on the ground providing medical care and psychological support to the affected populations. Anja Wolz, MSF field coordinator in Osh, describes the current situation on the ground and how MSF is responding to people's needs.
What is the current situation in Osh?
Kyrgyzstan 2010 © Aleksandr Glyadelyov/MSF
MSF Field Coordinator in Osh, Anya Wolz, changes the wound…
more......
Somalia: Civilians Continue to Bear Brunt of Warfare in Mogadishu
Somalia 2008 © Jehad Nga
Women and children living in an abandoned building after being displaced by the fighting in Mogadishu.
A very high proportion of civilians, among them large numbers of women and young children, are bearing the brunt of ongoing extreme warfare in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, with many suffering catastrophic injuries.
Medical data gathered at the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in the Dayniile neighborhood on the outskirts of Mogadishu reveal an alarming pattern over the first seven months of the year.
Of…
more......
Pakistan: MSF Aiding Flood Victims, Bolstering Teams on the Ground
Pakistan 2010 © MSF
MSF teams distributing relief kits in Baluchistan to people displaced by the floods.
Officials are now saying more than 3 million people have been directly affected and more than 1,400 killed by the devastating floods in northwestern Pakistan’s Baluchistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provinces. Some areas are becoming more accessible due to the water receding. More rains are expected in the coming days, however, which could cause renewed flooding and create problems in areas that have up until now been unaffected.
At present, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins…
more......
[Podcast] MSF Frontline Reports
More than a year after the end of the war in Sri Lanka, people who suffered spinal injuries as a result of the conflict are struggling to start life again. We meet some of the patients at MSF's rehabilitation unit in Pampaimadhu Hospital near Vavuniya.
more......
[Video] Kyrgyzstan: Tension and Violence Continue in the South
Pakistan: MSF Expands Assistance to Flood Victims
© REUTERS/Adrees Latif
Residents carry their belongings through a flooded road north west Pakistan.
This past weekend, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins San Frontières (MSF) completed several surveys to get a better picture of people’s needs amidst the floods that are surging through north-western Pakistan, the worst flooding the country has experienced in 80 years. MSF is now expanding activities to include water and sanitation provision and is also distributing kits containing hygiene products, cooking utensils and other items to fulfill immediate needs.
“The devastation by the floods is enormous,…
more......
[Voice from the Field] Niger: Going Beyond the Current Malnutrition Crisis
Niger 2010 © Alessandra Vilas Boas/MSF
Mothers wait to receive ready-to-use therapeutic food at a nutrition program in the district of Guidan Roumdji.
Dr. Marie-Pierre Allié, president of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), returned recently from a trip to Niger. With another nutritional emergency underway, new preventive approaches are emerging in the struggle against malnutrition.
What is your analysis of the situation?
Clearly, Niger is experiencing a serious food and nutritional crisis. Last year's poor rainfall produced inadequate harvests in a food security context…
more......
Pakistan: Severe Floods Affect 400,000 in the Northwest
Heavy rainfall in north-western Pakistan has directly affected 400,000 people and caused widespread destruction to homes and infrastructure. MSF is currently assessing the situation in order to tailor its response to this emergency.
MSF is carrying out exploratory missions in Swat, Lower Dir, Malakand, and Peshawar districts in order to assess the damage and the needs of the affected populations. An exploratory mission in the town of Bakthirabad, in Baluchistan’s Sibi district, has been completed; a team will return on this coming Sunday to distribute hygiene kits, plastic sheeting, and ready-to-use food items.
“There is widespread destruction…
more......
Sudan: MSF Forced to Suspend Medical Activities in Jonglei
Sudan 2009 © Jenn Warren
Women waiting to receive vaccinations at an MSF facility in Pibor in 2009.
Following three separate security incidents in one of its remote health care clinics, international emergency medical aid organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has been forced to suspend all activities in Gumuruk, Jonglei State.
MSF is calling on all armed groups, community members, and political parties in Southern Sudan to respect the neutrality of MSF medical staff, activities and facilities so that lifesaving aid can be delivered to people…
more......
Statement of Clarification Regarding MSF Collaboration with Israeli Doctors in Eastern Congo and Its Intervention in the Palestinian Territories
Articles and commentaries recently published in Haaretz, The Jerusalem Post, and the HuffingtonPost present misleading information concerning the cooperation between a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) team and Israeli burns specialists treating victims from a recent fuel tanker explosion in eastern Congo.
The fact is that during this intervention in the DRC, both the MSF and Israeli teams on the ground collaborated extremely well and appreciated each other’s contribution to help patients. Both medical teams shared the common goal of providing the best possible treatment to those most in need, and to date continue to…
more......
[Slideshow] Colombia: Armed Conflict and Mental Health
[Special Report] Colombia: Three-Time Victims
Special Report
Download Report
"It’s an absolute nightmare. Twenty-four days ago we were forced to flee our home along with seven other families because we had all been threatened. What you see now is all I have nothing—because we weren’t allowed to take anything with us...But the saddest thing of all is that they killed my 21-year-old son. He was a good boy, not because he was my son, but because he really was, he loved to work with the…
more......
[Press Release] Three-Time Victims: Colombians Continue to Face Violence, Neglect, and Stigma as a Result of Long-Standing Conflict
New York, July 27, 2010—Victims of the on-going conflict in Colombia not only suffer from the direct consequences of violence caused by the conflict but also from social and institutional stigma and neglect, according to a report released today by the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). In the report, titled “Three Time Victims,” MSF documents how violence, stigma, and neglect impact the mental health of people living in Caquetá Department of southern Colombia, and calls for mental health services to be adapted to the needs of this vulnerable population.
“Our teams…
more......
[Podcast] MSF Frontline Reports
In June violent clashes between Uzbek and Kyrgyz communities in southern Kyrgyzstan left hundreds dead and thousands wounded. Though the violence is now reduced, the fears are not. MSF has implemented a three-point strategy for treating victims of the violence and preparing for another potential surge.
more......
[Video] Malnutrition: Hundreds of Thousands of Children Under Threat in Sahel
[Voice from the Field] After the 18th International AIDS Conference, Possibilities for Scaling Up Optimal HIV/AIDS Treatment
This originally ran as a guest post on the Speaking of Medicine PLoS community blog
By Sharonann Lynch, HIV/AIDS Policy Advisor, Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières
As the 18th International AIDS Conference (IAC) winds down here in Vienna, the word in the hallways is that the science is in: earlier initiation of treatment and improved antiretroviral (ARV) drug regimens are better for individual patients and communities, and may even ultimately reduce transmission of HIV. Some of the new data presented at the conference…
more......
[Video] Haiti Six Months On
[Video] Kyrgyzstan: Tension Remains High
Central African Republic: MSF Assists People Seeking Refuge From LRA Attacks
CAR 2010 © MSF
After a rise in attacks by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in late April, thousands of people have come to Zémio seeking refuge.
Violence forces thousands to flee their homes
An upsurge in attacks by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in late April caused thousands of people to leave their homes and head to Zémio, a small rural town in the southeast of the Central African Republic (CAR). Since May, MSF has been providing medical support to the displaced people, as well as to…
more......
Southern Sudan: MSF Expands Activities as Nutritional Situation Worsens
In the last few months, a combination of bad harvests and growing insecurity has resulted in a huge increase in the rates of malnutrition in Southern Sudan. While Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is responding to the crisis, more feeding centers, specialized food, and staff are needed to prevent needless deaths of Sudanese children.
Here, MSF Emergency Coordinator in Southern Sudan Moses Chol explains how MSF is expanding activities so that more nutritional aid will reach the regions that desperately need it.
What is the nutritional situation in Southern Sudan today?
The situation is…
more......
[Podcast] MSF Frontline Reports
Only 10 percent of the 27,000 people working for MSF around the world are international field workers – or those who have come from other places to the countries where we work. The overwhelming majority of MSF field staff are national staff working in their home countries. This week we meet a Ugandan doctor who began his career with MSF after seeing the organization's work in his country.
more......
[Speech] U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (Help) Hearing
Innovation and Access for Neglected Diseases: The Experience of Médecins Sans Frontières
Oral Statement of
Suerie Moon
Board of Directors
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières - USA
July 21, 2010, 10am
430 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Thank you, Chairperson Harkin, Ranking Member Enzi, and the Committee.
My name is Suerie Moon and I am on the U.S. Board of Directors of the international medical humanitarian aid organization Doctors Without Borders, known by our French acronym MSF, which stands for Médecins Sans Frontières.
My testimony today is based on our decades…
more......
[Press Release] Kyrgyzstan: Tension and Violence Continue in the South
Geneva, July 20, 2010 — Five weeks after violent clashes erupted in the south of Kyrgyzstan, and despite an apparent return to a more peaceful situation, doctors, psychologists, and nurses working with the international humanitarian medical organization, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) continue to deal with cases of violence on a daily basis. More concerning still is that the capacity of victims to receive adequate health care differs according to the community they belong to.
“Every day, in our mobile clinics and health facilities with which we collaborate, our medical teams treat patients who recently suffered heavy…
more......
[Press Release] HIV/AIDS: Donors Gambling with Patients' Lives by Retreating from AIDS Funding
Special Report
HIV/AIDS: The Stories Behind the Science
MSF at the International AIDS Conference
HIV Facts Sheet
July 19, 2010, Vienna/New York — International donors are disregarding scientific evidence of the benefits of earlier and expanded HIV/AIDS treatment in order to achieve short-term cost savings, at the expense of the ten million people in need of treatment, said the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins…
more......
Pakistan: MSF Treats Victims of Bomb Blast in Swat District
Following an explosion at midday in Mingora, the main city of Swat District in Khyber Pathkunkhwa Province, medical teams from Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Pakistan’s Ministry of Health, treated 58 injured people, some of whom were seriously wounded.
“Soon after the blast occurred we started to receive a steady flow of people at the emergency room of Saidu Group Teaching Hospital (SGTH),” said Sonoko Shidehara, an MSF doctor in Swat. “We’ve seen 58 patients, including women and children. Most are now in a stable state, but two patients are still in critical condition.” Emergency preparedness…
more......
MSF at the International AIDS Conference - July 18-23
Nigeria: MSF Continues To Help Children With Lead Poisoning
Nigeria 2010 © Olga Overbeek/MSF
In Zamfara State, Nigeria, MSF provides emergency treatment for children under five years old with lead poisoning.
Earlier this year, cases of lead poisoning of children and adults were confirmed in villages in Zamfara State, northwestern Nigeria. Since early June, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), in collaboration with the State Ministry of Health, has been providing emergency treatment for children under five years old. Children in this age group are most vulnerable to the risks of poisoning. Lead poisoning is a consequence of…
more......
[Special Report] HIV/AIDS: The Stories and Trends Behind the Science
Special Report
Download Report [4.8 MB]
More Resources
HIV Facts Sheet
Despite the growing evidence that rapid scale up of HIV/AIDS treatment reduces unnecessary death, staves off disease, and reduces transmission of the virus, international donors are wavering and sending the message to scale back treatment plans.
On July 15, MSF will hold a media teleconference on the key issues that will be discussed at the XVIII International AIDS Conference (IAC) in Vienna, presenting some of the…
more......
Sleeping Sickness: Is The End In Sight?
South Sudan 2010 © Marco Baroncini/MSF
An MSF nurse cares for a child infected with sleeping sickness in Yambio Hospital, South Sudan.
In June 2010, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the reported number of new cases of sleeping sickness, or human African trypanosomiasis (HAT), has dropped below 10,000 for the first time in 50 years. There were 9,877 reported cases of the disease in 2009 compared to 17,600 in 2004. The WHO is justifiably proud of this achievement and says that it aspires to eliminate the fatal and…
more......
Afghanistan: Working to Improve Pediatric Care in Helmand
Afghanistan 2010 © Kate Ribet/MSF
An MSF doctor tends to a sick child in Lashkargah's Boost Hospital.
In November 2009, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) began supporting Boost Hospital on the outskirts of Lashkargah, the capital of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. At present, 300 patients are coming in every week to take advantage of the maternal, pediatric, and surgical services that are offered. Quality drugs are available as well.
The pediatric department admits nearly half of the hospital’s patients, 5 to 10 percent of whom are…
more......
Afghanistan: Reinforcing Emergency Health Care in Helmand
Afghanistan 2010 © Kate Ribet/MSF
MSF staff tend to an injured man in Lashkargah's Boost Hospital.
In southern Afghanistan, Helmand province’s one million inhabitants continue to suffer the effects of the ongoing conflict between NATO and Afghan government forces and various opposition groups. In Lashkargah, Helmand’s capital, where MSF has supported activities in Boost Hospital since November 2009, the need for emergency medical assistance remains acute.
Volker Lankow, MSF’s field coordinator in Helmand, explains that in the past, “The emergency room [at Boost] was only open for four…
more......
[Video] Slideshow: Living Displaced in Haiti Six Months Later
[Podcast] MSF Frontline Reports
Six months after the earthquake in Haiti, MSF is running 19 health facilities in and around Port-au-Prince and the needs are still huge.
more......
[Video] Haiti: A Family in the Ruins, Part 2
Haiti After the Earthquake: A multimedia look at MSF's work
Southern Sudan: MSF Treats Patients with Bullet Wounds After Clashes
Following a series of cattle raids that started on June 27 near Lekwongole in Jonglei State, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) treated five male patients between the ages of two and 30 for violent trauma wounds.
From its outreach post in Lekwongole, MSF transferred a four-year-old boy with head injuries and four patients with gunshot wounds (ages two, nine, 29, and 30) to its larger clinic in Pibor. There, the medical team stabilized the patients before evacuating those with gunshot wounds by plane for urgent surgery in Boma.
“In Pibor and Lekwongole,…
more......
Afghanistan: MSF Works With Local Staff to Aid Bombing Victims
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) personnel in Afghanistan worked with local staff at Boost hospital in Lashkargah, the capital of Helmand province, to treat 24 people wounded when four explosions occurred in the city on the morning of June 20.
“Patients started arriving at the emergency room 20 minutes after the first 2 explosions, which happened outside a bank,” says Dr. Paulo Reis, MSF’s doctor in charge. “Initially we received 20 patients, among them 3 children with varying degrees of trauma, from shell injury to shoulder lacerations. Two of these were admitted for surgery immediately, with a…
more......
Niger: MSF Responds to a Recurring Nutritional Crisis
Niger 2008 © Julia Kourafa/MSF
Mothers bringing their malnourished children to receive nutritional supplements at an MSF program in Baban Katami, Niger.
Field News
Taking a Community Approach to Malnutrition
Slideshow
A Day Working to Treat Malnourished Children
Video
Niger: Annual Peak for Malnutrition Starts Early This Year
The people of Niger are once again facing severe food shortages. Erratic rainfall in 2009 had a heavy impact on harvests. The first…
more......
[Press Release] Liberia: MSF Hands Over Hospitals to Ministry of Health
Video
We Couldn't Just Sit By:
20 Years in Liberia
Monrovia, Liberia, June 25, 2010 � After providing 20 years of emergency medical aid in Liberia, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today officially stopped running its remaining two hospitals in the country and the Liberian Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (MoH&SW) has taken responsibility for the services previous provided by MSF.
Following the end of civil war in 2003 and elections in 2005, MSF began to progressively hand over its emergency projects and hospitals…
more......
[Voice from the Field] Kyrgyzstan: "Mistrust Between Communities Leaving Many Without Essential Medical Care"
Kyrgyzstan 2010 © Alexander Glyadyelov
Ethnic Uzbek refugees returning to Kyrgyzstan at a border crossing in Saratash.
Andrei Slavuckij is heading Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontierés (MSF) programs in southern Kyrgyzstan. He describes the situation in Osh, two weeks after violent clashes killed hundreds of people.
Is the situation still tense on the ground?
You can still feel a high level of tension among the population. At the beginning of last week, a hospital supported by MSF in Osh received 25 wounded in one day, many…
more......
[Video] We Couldn't Just Sit By: 20 Years in Liberia
[Voice from the Field] Kyrgyzstan: MSF Activities in Southern Kyrgyzstan
In the regions of Osh and Jalal-Abad, MSF continues to provide medical and psychological care and to distribute relief items to the many people who have been affected and displaced by violence.
In Onadyr, a neighborhood of 50,000 inhabitants located southeast of Osh, MSF doctors and nurses have carried out 169 dressings for wounded people as well as 535 consultations during their first week at the local clinic. In addition to psychological and mental health disorders, the main pathologies seen were respiratory tract infections, high blood pressure and diarrhea. MSF has also set up a surgical facility inside…
more......
[Slideshow] Niger: A Day Working to Treat Malnourished Children
Meningitis: A New Low-Cost Vaccine Holds Great Promise for 430 million People at Risk
Control of epidemic meningococcal disease, WHO practical guidelines, World Health Organization, 1998, 2nd edition, WHO/EMC/BAC/98.3
The African meningitis belt.
A new and improved low-cost vaccine against Meningitis A received the formal quality stamp of approval from the World Health Organization (WHO) last week, a move that offers great promise for the 430 million people at risk of the disease in Sub-Saharan Africa’s so-called Meningitis Belt. But Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warns that the full roll out of this much-needed vaccine depends on sufficient funds being mobilized.
…
more......
Niger: Taking a Community Approach to Malnutrition
Niger 2010 © MSF
A mother who has brought her two small children to see the MSF team.
In Magaria, a town just steps away from Niger’s border with Nigeria, the hospital’s intensive therapeutic feeding center (ITFC) is nearly overloaded; already 240 children have been hospitalized. “Treating such a large number of children, who often arrive in a desperate state, is an almost impossible task under good conditions,” says Dr. Claude Ngobe, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontierés (MSF) medical coordinator for Niger. “We have to step up the early…
more......
[Podcast] MSF Frontline Reports
In an area of northwest Nigeria, gold-mining means extremely high levels of lead-poisoning and the deaths of children. MSF treats patients for lead-poisoning for the first time in the organization's history.
Additional music: "Love Theme" © David Merson Hess
more......
[Special Report] Emergency Response After the Haiti Earthquake: Choices, Obstacles, Activities and Finance (page2)
Special Report
Download Report [1.29 MB]
Continued from page 1.
Work and Witness
SURGERY AND REHABILITATION
Emergency Surgery
In the 20 days following the earthquake, MSF surgeons worked around the clock, carrying out over 1,300 surgical operations. Just over one tenth (140) of those operations were amputations, and they were always the last resort in the effort to save the life or limb of the patient.
Paul McMaster is a surgeon who reached Haiti…
more......
Somalia: 23 Women and Children Injured By Shelling in Mogadishu
Somalia 2008 © Jehad Nga
Somalis awaiting care for malnutrition at an MSF facility in 2008.
As fierce fighting again gripped Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) admitted 42 people suffering from blast injuries to its hospital in the Daynile area of the city between Thursday and Friday. Of the 42 people treated in the hospital’s emergency room, 23 were women and children under the age of 14.
“This is the highest number of injured women and children we have received in 24-hour period in…
more......
[Video] Liberia Healthcare 20 Years
[Press Release] Haiti: Doctors Without Borders Publishes Key Data on Earthquake Emergency Relief
Special Report
Read online | Download
Port-au-Prince, July 8, 2010 – Six months after Haiti’s January 12 earthquake, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today released a report describing the organization’s largest ever emergency response. The report also describes the dire living conditions of Haitians today and provides an explanation of MSF’s commitment for the coming years.
MSF’s medical work in Haiti has evolved during the past six months, from an emergency response to a…
more......
[Press Release] New MSF International President Elected
Geneva, June 29, 2010 – The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today announced the election of its new international president, Dr. Unni Karunakara.
Dr. Karunakara was formally installed during MSF’s International Council meeting in in Amsterdam over the weekend. He takes over from Dr. Christophe Fournier, and will head MSF’s worldwide movement, which includes 19 national associations and branch offices in other countries, for the next three years.
“I am honoured to be elected for such an important role in the MSF movement and to contribute to strategic…
more......
MSF Assists in Treating Victims of DRC Fuel Tanker Disaster
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is supporting the hospital in Uvira, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, after a fuel tanker crashed and exploded in the nearby village of Sange late last week.
Over the weekend, 43 people with severe burns were admitted to Uvira General Hospital. Three more people with severe burns were transferred from a hospital in Lemura to Uvira this week. MSF sent two doctors to the hospital to assist the Ministry of Health in treating the wounded, and also donated medical materials. The crash killed up to 242 people and left countless people injured.…
more......
[Podcast] MSF Frontline Reports
The HIV-TB dual epidemic in Swaziland: one in four adults in the country has HIV, the highest prevalence in the world; and with compromised immune systems, people living with HIV are much more susceptible to other deadly diseases, including TB and its drug-resistant forms. MSF is using innovative ways to treat this deadly dual epidemic in a challenging environment.
more......
[Special Report] Emergency Response After the Haiti Earthquake: Choices, Obstacles, Activities and Finance
Special Report
Download Report [1.29 MB]
Executive Summary
Six months after the earthquake that devastated Haiti on 12th January 2010, this report describes the evolution of MSF’s work during what is the organization’s largest ever rapid emergency response. It attempts to explain the scope of the medical and material aid provided to Haiti by MSF since the catastrophe, but also to set out the considerable challenges and dilemmas faced by the organization. It acknowledges that whilst the overall relief effort has…
more......
[Podcast] MSF Frontline Reports
Keeping babies alive during the first 28 days of their lives is challenging in some parts of the world, including Aweil, Southern Sudan, where MSF runs a neonatal care program.
Additional music: "Una hora de lluvia incesante" © Bosque De Mi Mente
more......
[Video] Niger: Annual Peak for Malnutrition Starts Early This Year
Niger: MSF Helps Vaccinate Nearly 400,000 Against Meningitis
Niger 2010 © Liane Cerminara /MSF
A child is immunized against meningococcal meningitis during a mass vaccination campaign in April.
Nearly 400,000 children and young adults were vaccinated against meningococcal meningitis in the areas of Zinder, Maradi, and Madaoua when Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) supported the ministry of health during a vaccination campaign that ran from April 13 to 25.
A drastic rise in meningitis cases reported by the authorities in these regions resulted in the timely decision by the ministry of health to launch the…
more......
Republic of Congo: A Harsh Status Quo For Refugees From The DRC
Congo Brazzaville 2009 © Gaelle Lavoue/MSF
Refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo now seeking sanctuary in the Betou district of the Republic of Congo.
Approximately 110,000 people from the Equateur region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are still gathered on the Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville) side of the Ubangi River. For now, their prospect of returning home is dim, but the health and humanitarian situation has barely improved in recent months and could worsen. Below, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) program manager Isabelle Mouniaman discusses the…
more......
[Video] Migrants Detained in Greece on Their Way West
[Press Release] U.S. Trade Watch List Threatens Access to Lifesaving Drugs
NEW YORK, NY, April 30, 2010 — The U.S. government’s decision to place India, Thailand, Brazil, and other countries on its annual trade "Watch Lists" is a tactic that threatens access to affordable generic drugs for patients in the developing world, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said today.
The "Watch Lists," in the annual Special 301 Report released today by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), take action against countries the U.S. considers to be inadequately protecting intellectual property, even though they are complying with international agreements.…
more......
Sierra Leone: Seeking to Improve Access to Healthcare for Women and Children
Sierra Leone 2009 © Emily Linendoll/MSF
A mother with her son after the boy got a check up at a malnutrition program run in an MSF clinic in Sierra Leone's Bo district.
On the April 27, the government of Sierra Leone will start implementing a policy of free healthcare for pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers, and children under the age of five. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) welcomes the government’s commitment to the new policy and hopes that this will improve access to healthcare for these vulnerable groups.
more......
Sudan: MSF Treats People Wounded During Protests in Unity State
This past Saturday morning, following an appeal from the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Bentiu, Unity State, Southern Sudan, the international medical organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) mobilized a medical team to evacuate three patients suffering from gunshot wounds. The patients had been severely wounded the prior day during protests in Bentiu that began after local radio stations announced the winner of the election for governor in Unity State.
The patients were stabilized by MoH staff in Bentiu hospital before being transferred to MSF medics who evacuated them by plane to the MSF run surgical hospital…
more......
[Press Release] EU-India Free Trade Agreement: Last Chance to Unblock Access to Medicines
Video
AIDS: Non-Negotiable Lives
Blog
A Blog by MSF's Dr. Tido Von Schoenangerer
Audio
A BBC Overview of the Threat to Generics, with an Interview with MSF (beginning at 13:06)
April 26, 2010, Brussels/New York – As the European Commission (EC) and India meet for closed-door negotiations on a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) this week, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warns this is the last chance to remove provisions that will block access to life-saving medicines…
more......
[Op-Eds & Articles] The Bellingham Herald: Obama Administration Needs to Tackle Neglected Diseases
By Dr. Unni Karunakara and Dr. Bernard Pecould
Last month, a group of Congress members led by Rep. Donald Payne, D-N.J., wrote to the head of USAID, Dr. Rajiv Shah, with a simple message: We need to do more to fight neglected tropical diseases.
In its Global Health Initiative, the Obama administration has vowed to devote unprecedented resources to the fight against five parasitic and bacterial diseases damaging impoverished and remote communities throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America.
But the historical importance of the initiative is undercut by a bewildering and glaring omission: So far, several…
more......
[Ideas & Opinions] Despite Existing Medical Solutions, Malaria Remains a Killer
MSF treats more than 1,000,000 malaria patients each year in projects in 30 countries across the world. Click on the MSF flags to see figures and images from our work in each country.
Background Information
Quick Facts About Malaria
Slideshow
Mali: Treating Malaria In the Heart of the Village
The commemoration of World Malaria Day on April 25th will be of the utmost importance this year. The review in September of progress made towards the 2015 Millennium…
more......
Mali: "We Help Them Help Themselves"
Mali 2010 @ Barbara Sigge/MSF
Madinata Maiga talks to school children in Kangaba about malaria.
Slideshow
Mali: Treating Malaria In the Heart of the Village
“Do you know who I am?” Madinata Maiga asks.
“You work for Médecins Sans Frontières,” the children answer.
“And what does Médecins Sans Frontières do in Mali?”
“You help treat diseases like Malaria.”
“We treat malaria, that’s right,” Maiga responds. “And that is exactly what I…
more......
[Slideshow] Mali: Treating Malaria In the Heart of the Village
[Voice from the Field] Access: Fighting Free Trade Agreements
Fatima Mello of the Brazil Network for the Integration of Peoples worked with other civil society groups across South America in order to bring down the proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, a collective trade agreement between the United States and countries in South America. In Brazil, the public campaign specifically succeeded in alerting people to the threat the FTAA posed to the country’s program of expanding access to medicines. Negotiations on a continent-wide agreement were finally dropped in 2003 with credit going to the civil society campaign that put pressure on the regional governments. Here Fatima Mello…
more......
China: MSF Team Assesses Needs in Earthquake Zone
According to official Chinese media, the death toll from the 6.9 magnitude earthquake last Wednesday in the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Yushu has reached 1,706 with 12,128 people injured, 1,394 of them severely.
A three-person MSF assessment team arrived to the town of Jiegu in Yushu on Saturday evening and spent Sunday meeting officials and looking at medical needs. The team met with the local Public Health Bureau as well as officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who said that MSF’s assistance with the initial emergency response phase was not needed.
The most severely injured quake…
more......
[Video] AIDS: Non-Negotiable Lives
[Video] South Africa: Violence Without Borders
[Video] Month in Focus: April 2010
[Video] Morocco: Sexual Violence and Migration
China: MSF Team Completes Assessment in Earthquake Zone
The three-person assessment team sent to the area affected by the 6.9-magnitude earthquake that devastated the town of Jiegu, in China's Qinghai Province, last Wednesday have finished the initial stage of their assessment.
According to the latest figures by Chinese official media, the quake in the Autonomous Prefecture of Yushu killed 2,064 people and injured 12,135, and 175 people are still missing.
The assessment team has confirmed that there will be no immediate MSF response as the Chinese authorities and volunteers have reacted swiftly. During the assessment, the team met with local health officials and…
more......
[Video] Haiti: Three Months After the Earthquake
[Video] AIDS: Non-Negotiable Lives
[Video] Mayotte: Reaching Isolated Migrants
Access: Trading Away The Lives of People Living with HIV and AIDS
Lesotho 2010 © Zethu Mlobeli/MSF
Twelve-year old Tsepang Robis, who has been treated by MSF for TB and is receiving treeatment for HIV.
Closed-door negotiations between India and the European Union (EU) for a free trade agreement (FTA) are entering a crucial phase on April 28, 2010.
At stake is access to affordable medicines for millions in India and others beyond India’s borders. The country is the source of 80 percent of the AIDS medicines used in all Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) projects, and…
more......
China: MSF Assessing Needs in Qinghai Province
According to official Chinese media, the death toll from the earthquake that hit the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Yushu in Qinghai province early Wednesday has risen to 760 people. Approximately 11,500 people were reportedly injured.
A three-person Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) assessment team arrived on Friday in the provincial capital of Xiling and made contact with provincial health officials, the local Red Cross and international non-governmental organizations that have been working in the earthquake-affected area. The team has also been in contact with local government officials in Yushu.
On Friday evening,…
more......
Sudan: MSF Opens a Kala Azar Treatment Center in Eastern Atbara Region
Sudan 2010 © Asia Kambal/MSF
A mother getting treatment for her daughter at the new kala azar center at Tawila hospital.
In the two months since Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) opened a kala azar (visceral leishmaniasis) treatment center in eastern Sudan, some 400 patients have been treated by personnel from MSF and the Ministry of Health. “Had these people not received treatment they would have died,” says Dr. Dagemlidet Worku, MSF’s field coordinator for the project. “Working in this hospital, we will be able to save hundreds of…
more......
China: MSF Heading to Qinghai Province To Assess Earthquake Damage
Following a 7.1-magnitude earthquake in China’s Qinghai province early Wednesday, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is sending a three-person team to asses the situation.
Due to the remote location of the quake-affected region in northwest China, the team will reach the area on Saturday and will then determine how MSF can assist authorities in tackling the aftermath. Chinese authorities estimate that 400 people have been killed and 10,000 people are injured.
The team will look at the immediate medical and non-medical needs. Another potential area of intervention may be providing psychological support,…
more......
Papua New Guinea: Speaking Out About Violence
Papua New Guinea 2009 © Nathalie Muffler/MSF
An MSF outreach worker in Lae talks to a crowd about the effects of violence on individuals and societies.
The people of Papua New Guinea (PNG) are caught in a self-perpetuating cycle of violence. The rapid development the country has experienced over the past year has had the unintended consequence of aggravating existing tensions. For the most part, it is women and children who bear the brunt of this, suffering rape and other terrible forms of violence—some of it carried out by family…
more......
[Slideshow] Haiti: How They Live
Haiti: Three Months After the Earthquake
Haiti 2010 @ Michael Goldfarb/MSF
A review of MSF's current activities and future objectives three months after the earthquake that hit Haiti on January 12.
Audio Slideshow
Haiti: How They Live
Survival after the quake
The earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12 brought even greater uncertainty to a population that was already extremely vulnerable. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has been working in Haiti since 1991 and was therefore able to react…
more......
[Special Report] Turkmenistan�s Opaque Health System
Download Report [350 KB]
The people of Turkmenistan are being failed by their health care system, by their government, and by the international community. The system that is supposed to ensure their health is instead designed to conceal problems. This is not a case of individual practitioners failing to do their jobs but one that is far more systematic.
It is undeniable that communicable diseases such as HIV/ AIDS, tuberculosis (TB) and sexually transmitted infections are more prevalent than reported figures would suggest.…
more......
[Press Release] Healthcare Façade in Turkmenistan Putting Lives at Risk
New York/Berlin/Moscow, April 12, 2010 -- Turkmenistan’s outward show of health and prosperity to the international community is masking a dangerous public health situation, in which government officials actively deny the prevalence of infectious disease, medical data is systemically manipulated, and international standards and protocols are rarely applied in practice, according to a report released today by the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which details its 10-year-experience providing medical care in the country.
During its time in Turkmenistan, MSF witnessed how people’s lives were put at risk by everyday medical negligence and widespread…
more......
[Video] DRC: Condition:Critical - Messages of Support Delivered
Kyrgyzstan: MSF Provides Emergency Medical Supplies For Victims of Violence in Bishkek
Hundreds of wounded arrived in Bishkek hospitals following violent confrontations between armed forces and protesters in the streets of Kyrgyzstan’s capital on April 7. The Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) team in Kyrgyzstan immediately responded by providing the National Hospital and the main ambulance station with emergency medical supplies and drugs, including bandages and other sterile material, intravenous injection sets, antibiotics and painkillers. More material and drugs are to be donated today by MSF to three health structures in the capital city.
In coordination with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), MSF staff…
more......
Pakistan: Bomb Blast Leaves 44 Dead and 88 Severely wounded in North West Frontier Province
Pakistan 2009 © Susan Tector/MSF
Following an explosion in the Lower Dir district of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province on Monday, doctors and medical staff from the medical organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Pakistan’s Ministry of Health treated 88 injured people, most of whom were seriously wounded in the blast.
The explosion took place in the town of Timurgara, roughly 600 meters from the District Head Quarter (DHQ) hospital, which MSF has been supporting. One of the priorities has been to help the hospital improve its…
more......
[Podcast] MSF Frontline Reports
In Armenia, patients with drug-resistant strains of TB have to undergo extremely challenging treatment; also - MSF's reaction to NATO's call for NGOs to work alongside military operations; and in Burundi a strategic response to an alarming outbreak of malaria.
more......
[Video] Sri Lanka: Reviewing 9 Months of Activity
[Press Release] UN Donor Conference: Given the Immense Needs, Haitians Must Have Continued Access to Medical Care
Port-au-Prince / New York, 30 March 2010 – With the majority of the Haitian population still extremely vulnerable, donors attending the United Nations conference in New York on March 31, must not take measures that would limit the populations’ access to health care, said the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) on Tuesday.
Since the January 12 earthquake, nearly all public and many private medical structures in the affected areas have offered healthcare free of charge. Recently, however, plans have been disclosed to progressively reinstate hospital fees as early as mid April.
“Making…
more......
Ethiopia: TB Treatment in the Somali Region
“Besides all the coughing I had a lot of pain on the right side of my ribs and I could not sleep in the night,” Farhan, a patient at the new tuberculosis (TB) center in Wardher, explains. “I was very scared and worrying for the future all the time. All the people in the villages were looking at me. They asked, ‘Why are you coughing so much? You must be a serious case. Soon you will probably not be with us anymore.’ ”
The town of Wardher is situated in the largest zone of the Somali Region of…
more......
[Video] Kenya: the Forgotten Camps of Dadaab
[Video] Haiti: Rebuilding Lives
Lesotho: Inspired by His Grandmother, A Patient Helps Others
The Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) HIV/AIDS program in Lesotho relies on lay counselors to ensure its effectiveness. Lay counselors are committed community members, and often HIV or TB/HIV co-infected patients, trained to undertake non-medical tasks usually done by a nurse or a doctor. Devoted to helping fellow patients in their villages, they are an integral part of the program, as they provide guidance and encouragement when it comes to following treatment regimens. But each one of the counselors has their own story to tell:
Mahlomola, 33, arrives at the rural Masemouse mountain clinic after a brisk…
more......
Armenia: Psychologists, Social Workers Vital to TB Treatment Programs
In the drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR TB) program Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) supervises in Armenia, the adherence of patients to treatment is a major issue. Among the patients admitted to the program in 2007, one in five failed to complete the regimen.
Treatment can last up to two years and patients must take a daily cocktail of toxic pills, injections and granules. Side effects are often severe and pre-existing medical conditions can be aggravated, particularly those associated with the kidneys and liver.
Along with the medical staff, social workers and psychologists are an integral…
more......
Swaziland: Children Suffer the Consequences of Poor TB Infection Control
Her smile is so sweet and her disposition is so sparkling that you would never believe what she has been through in her short life. Yet there was a time not long ago when six-year-old Lindokuhle Mamba couldn't smile because she was in constant pain. Young as she is, she has already come close to dying at the hands of one of the deadliest diseases, tuberculosis (TB).
Not only does Lindokuhle have TB, but she suffers from multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB which means that she has a strain of the TB bacteria that is resistant to a…
more......
[Special Report] Sexual Violence and Migration
Special Report
Download Report [644 KB]
Introduction
This briefing paper highlights the problem of sexual violence against Sub-Saharan migrant women, who arrive in Morocco on their way to Europe. Through the data and testimonies gathered in its medical-humanitarian projects, Médecins Sans Frontières hopes to contribute to finding a comprehensive answer to this problem, which increasingly affects more, and younger, women.
Transit countries, such as Morocco, have faced pressures from the European Union (EU) to control migration. Restrictive EU migration and asylum…
more......
Armenia: A Former TB Patient Helps Others With Their Treatment
With his sturdy build and firm handshake, Tevan* is a picture of health these days, his bout with drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR TB) behind him. After more than two years of grueling treatment, he is now fully recovered. But not long ago, he was in extremely bad shape.
“One day at work, I felt unwell and became very weak,” says the 50-year-old construction manager. “For two days I was sick at home with a high temperature and then I started coughing up blood.” He lost more than 40 pounds before he was diagnosed with DR TB and…
more......
Tuberculosis: An Unfortunate Resurgence
Heaven on Earth. That’s the first impression of the vista outside the New Haven Clinic, one of 17 health centers overseen by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in the Shiselweni region of Swaziland. At the top of a verdant hill, the clinic is not far from a village, a few dozen houses, a church, and a school surrounded by fields and prairies. In the shadow of a large tree, three women sell colorful fruits and vegetables.
The bucolic scene is deceiving, however. Behind the clinic, some 30 patients wait in line—men, women, and children, all…
more......
[Voice from the Field] Tuberculosis: Diagnosing Children�A Terrible Neglect
Despite the growing global health problem that tuberculosis (TB) represents, it continues to be a disease that is greatly neglected. Young children, who are at very high risk of dying if they contract TB, have been among the main victims of this longstanding neglect.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that one million children each year develop TB, the vast majority of whom live in resource-poor settings. The true number is likely higher because children with TB can be very difficult to diagnose. Dr. Marianne Gale, a Medical Advisor with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)…
more......
[Press Release] Migrant Women en Route to Europe Enduring Sexual Violence
Rabat/Barcelona/New York--March 25, 2010 --Sub-Saharan migrant women are enduring various forms of sexual violence in their countries of origin and while en route to Europe, with many forced to flee their homes because of violent conflict or to escape forced marriages or domestic violence, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said today.
Women face further abuse and sexual violence on their journey northward. In Morocco they are frequently subjected to sexual exploitation in the form of prostitution. Few of them dare to speak out about what they have suffered. MSF is concerned that…
more......
[Video] Mali: the Koutiala Pediatric Project
Burundi: Northern Regions Gripped by Malaria Emergency
Burundi 2010 © Martina Bacigalupo
People in Kayanza province in northern Burundi line up to receive mosquito nets.
Burundi has been grappling with a serious increase of malaria patients since the start of the year. MSF teams have been cooperating with Burundi authorities to fight the disease’s spread by treating patients and distributing mosquito nets to prevent new infections.
Malaria is spread through the bite of certain mosquitoes. These specific mosquitoes have been rife in northern Burundi since late 2009. Malaria cases have spread in the provinces…
more......
Armenia: A Teacher's Experience with DR TB
Larisa* recalls with a shudder the moment she was diagnosed with drug-resistant tuberculosis in the central TB clinic in the Armenian capital of Yerevan. “I thought first of all, ‘that’s all, I will die,’ “ recounts the 29-year-old. She had been teaching English and had a young child of her own, but when the diagnosis came, “I thought there was nothing worse in this world,” she says. “The colors all around changed. All was black.”
Drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR TB) occurs when TB bacilli present in a patient are resistant to the first-line drugs that customarily are most effective…
more......
[Video] Month In Focus: March 2010
[Slideshow] Treating Drug-Resistant TB in Armenia
[Video] World TB Day: Rolandi in Georgia
Lesotho: A �Well-Spring of Hope� in a Mountain Kingdom Haunted by TB/HIV
The sound of coughing fills the short passageway outside the female ward of Scott Hospital in Morija, Lesotho, where Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the national Ministry of Health manage a program locals have dubbed “Selibeng Sa Tsepo,” or “wellspring of hope.” Apart from the nursing staff in the ward, there are no visitors. The beautiful, mountainous landscape is visible through the windows, but the patients here are all in serious condition, suffering from tuberculosis (TB), the leading cause of death of people living with HIV in Lesotho.
Mampho Ratsese, 57, is one of…
more......
Krygyzstan: Ex-Prisoner who Beat TB Preaches �Patience, Patience, Patience and Don�t Lose Hope!�
Ruslan is returning to prison to visit his fellow inmates, but this time he’s a free man. He's come back to Colony 31, a special penal colony for prisoners suffering from tuberculosis (TB), to celebrate with his doctors the completion of his long, arduous and painful treatment for multidrug-resistant TB (MDR TB).
“It was like a nightmare, you can’t imagine how difficult it was to take those drugs,” he explains. “You want to sleep but you can’t. You feel dizzy, you feel nauseous, you vomit, but you don’t feel any better. I took the drugs even…
more......
[Video] Tuberculosis: Still Nothing New
[Video] World TB Day 2010
[Voice from the Field] Iraq: "We Are Making A Difference"
Iraq 2010 © MSF
MSF surgeons at work at the General Hospital of Hawijah.
Despite the difficult security situation, an MSF surgical team composed of Iraqi doctors started to work in the General Hospital of Hawijah in Kirkuk governorate at the beginning of January. It is the first time since the outbreak of the war that MSF is able to directly treat patients in this part of the country. The team’s anesthetist Dr. M* discusses the impact of their work.
*For security reasons all MSF staff working in…
more......
[Open Letters] Using Generic Drugs to Save Lives Worldwide
Re “Biologics Boondoggle,” by Anthony D. So and Samuel L. Katz (Op-Ed, March 8):
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières is concerned that a provision in proposed health care legislation would allow pharmaceutical companies to extend monopolies on high-priced medicines known as biologics. As a medical humanitarian organization providing vaccines and treating diseases around the world, we fear that this provision would create another barrier to developing affordable generic versions of cutting-edge drugs.
Biologics hold great promise for new vaccines and medicines. Our experience has shown how critical competition is to reducing prices and improving access. Thanks…
more......
[Press Release] DRC: Soldiers Remove Wounded Patients from MSF Hospital in South Kivu
Democratic Republic of Congo 2009 @ Moises Saman
FARDC soldiers patrolling South Kivu in September 2009; members of the same force raided an MSF-supported hospital in the province on March 11.
Bukavu, DRC/New York, March 17, 2010 --The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today deplored a serious incident that occurred in the isolated village of Katanga in the Hauts Plateaux region of South Kivu Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
On Thursday, March 11, armed soldiers from the Congolese Army (FARDC -…
more......
Chile: MSF Provides Psychological Support, Workshops, and Training
Chile 2010 © MSF
MSF teams distributing basic necessities in quake-affected areas of Chile
The numerous tremors that followed the February 27 earthquake in Chile have added new levels of stress to an already shaken population. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has therefore made mental health care a priority in its response to the disaster. Simultaneously, as the nights grow colder and the chance of rainfall increases, MSF is speeding up its distribution of plastic sheeting and blankets for people whose homes were damaged and who are now often camping…
more......
Papua New Guinea: MSF Completes Emergency Cholera Intervention
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has completed a seven month-long emergency cholera intervention in Papua New Guinea.
Papua New Guinea’s first cholera outbreak in 50 years started in Morobe province in July 2009. In October, cholera was detected in the northern province of Madang, followed by another outbreak in East Sepik, where the disease spread like wildfire in settlements along the Sepik River. As of March 1, more than 2,100 cases have been confirmed nationwide. Fifty people have died.
MSF was already working in the city of Lae in Morobe province and…
more......
[Video] Haiti: MSF Projects Two Months After the Earthquake
Haiti: Two Months After the Quake, New Services and New Concerns
Haiti 2010 © Benoit Finck/MSF
Distributions of tents and other necessities continue in several locations in Haiti
Figures to Date (as of March 10);
International staff
348
National Staff
3,060
Operating Theaters
16
Number of Beds
1,340
Patients Treated
54,789
Surgical Interventions
3,781
Non-Food Item Kits Distributed
17,900
Tents Distributed
10,456
Number of Sites…
more......
Chile: "Houses Were Literally Swallowed by the Tide"
Chile 2010 © Pierre Garrigou/MSF
MSF in increasing its assistance in more isolated areas of Chile that have yet to be fully serviced
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams in Chile have increased the distribution of medical supplies and relief material such as hygiene kits, plastic sheeting for shelter and blankets in the regions of Maule and Bío Bío, which were severely impacted by the earthquake that struck the country 12 days ago. Additionally, a team of psychologists is supporting the training of mental health workers who will assist…
more......
[Press Release] People Living with HIV/AIDS: India Must Not Sacrifice Us in Trade Agreement with Europe
Geneva/New Delhi, March 12, 2010 – As the final round of closed-door negotiations for a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between India and the European Union (EU) is about to start this month, people living with HIV/AIDS are protesting to ensure Indian negotiators do not give in to pressure to accept terms that will seriously hamper access to medicines for millions of people living in the developing world.
“We are marching to call on the Indian government not to trade away our lives,” said Loon Gangte, president of the Delhi Network of Positive People (DNP+). “Lifelong treatment for people…
more......
[Special Report] Afghanistan: A Return to Humanitarian Action
In late 2008, refugees from Farah province, Afghanistan, told Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) aid workers in Iran about the horrific levels of violence they faced inside their country. Some even said that the violence that summer was worse than at any time during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s. One year later, the UN reported that 2009 was the deadliest year for Afghan civilians since the current war began in November 2001.1
Today, this violent reality – fuelled by fighting between international coalition forces and opposition groups like the Taliban, as well as a complex mixture of…
more......
[Press Release] Two Abducted MSF Staff Released in Haiti
Port-au-Prince, March 11, 2010 – Two staff members of the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), abducted on March 5 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, were safely released today.
“We are immensely relieved,” said Jean-Sebastien Matte, head of mission for MSF in Haiti. “Our colleagues are out, are safe and are in good health. We share in the joy of their relatives and friends who have been eagerly awaiting such good news over the past five days. Our two colleagues will soon be reunited with their families.”
Out of respect for the privacy of the…
more......
[Press Release] DRC: Thousands of displaced civilians trapped by conflict, wounded unable to reach hospitals in Hauts Plateaux, South Kivu
Bukavu, DRC / New York, March 11, 2010 - Medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is deeply concerned by the rapidly worsening situation in the isolated area of Hauts Plateaux in the region of Uvira, South Kivu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Thousands of civilians are trapped by conflict that has been raging in the area since the beginning of February 2010 between the Congolese army (FARDC), FDLR rebels and various armed groups. Violence against civilians is frequent, but the constant threat to civilians prevents wounded people from reaching the local hospital where an…
more......
[Press Release] NATO Statement Endangers Patients in Afghanistan
Kabul/NewYork, March 11, 2010 -- The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today strongly objected to a recent statement by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, in which he implied that nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) should be the “soft power” component to military
strategy.
In conflict areas, MSF never works alongside, or partners with, any military strategy. The organization’s complete independence and neutrality is what helps negotiate access to populations in need of emergency medical assistance.
The NATO statement creates additional risks to patients and staff by suggesting that medical work is part…
more......
Republic of Congo: The Forgotten People of the Ubangi River
Republic of Congo 2009 © MSF
Some of the rising number of refugees who have fled fighting in the DRC to seek sanctuary in the Republic of Congo since late last year.
Tens of thousands of refugee families on the banks of the Ubangi River in the Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville) and Central African Republic (CAR) are facing extreme shortages of food, shelter and healthcare. The refugees fled violence that erupted in Equateur Province in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo at the end of 2009. Since then, more than…
more......
[Press Release] AIDS Care Gap between Wealthy and Developing Countries Risks Becoming a Chasm
London, March 9, 2010 � AIDS leaders gathering in London today face the daunting challenge of implementing new World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations for earlier treatment with better AIDS drug cocktails at a time when donors are backing away from the promise of �universal access,� said Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
The WHO recently released new treatment recommendations for people living with HIV in developing countries which could help bridge the significant gap between the standard of care for people in northern and southern countries.
�In MSF programs we are striving to meet the higher standard of care which…
more......
Chile: MSF Supporting Hospitals, Organizing Mobile Clinics, Sending Supplies
Chile 2010 © Pierre Garrigou /MSF&c
MSF teams are supporting Chilean hospitals, organizing mobile clinics, and conducting mental health consultations in quake affected areas of Chile.
Ten days after an 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck central Chile, the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins San Frontières (MSF) teams that have travelled through the affected areas are focusing their interventions on the most urgent needs: supporting health structures that are caring for large numbers of patients, re-establishing primary health care services, distributing basic necessities, and offering mental health assistance to the affected population.
…
more......
Afghanistan: MSF Expanding Services Offered in Eastern Kabul
Afghanistan 2009 © Pascale Zintzen /MSF
A woman receiving a medical consultation at Ahmed Shah Baba Hospital in eastern Kabul
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has been supporting the district hospital of Ahmed Shah Baba in eastern Kabul since October 2009. The population of Kabul has tripled over the last 10 years. Some people are fleeing conflict-torn areas for the relative safety of the capital, while others, pushed by poverty, are trying to make a living in Kabul. Returnees from Pakistan and other provinces of Afghanistan have also…
more......
Afghanistan: MSF Providing Badly Needed Health Care in Helmand Province
Afghanistan 2010 © Pascale Zintzen /MSF
MSF's hospital in Lashkargah, Helmand Province, is a "no weapons" facility.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is supporting the regional Boost Hospital in Lashkargah, the capital of Afghanistan's Helmand province. Our aim is to provide free, life-saving medical care in all areas, including maternity, pediatrics, surgery and emergency room service. Although the recent Coalition and government offensives into Marjah and Nad Ali have garnered a great deal of attention, the rest of Helmand has also been hit hard by the ongoing conflict. One…
more......
[Voice from the Field] Ethiopia's Somali Region: "The moment I saved a child�s life for the first time will always stay with me"
Ethiopia 2009 © MSF
MSF midwife Mali Ebrahami checks on mother and child patients at the health center in Wardher.
Ongoing clashes between government and rebel forces, which began in the early 1990s, has left the people of Wardher, in the Somali region of Ethiopia, caught in the middle. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) supports an Ethiopian Bureau of Health (BoH) center in Wardher town, delivering primary health care to the people in the area. The center’s antenatal unit, where MSF midwife Mali Ebrahami worked, is teeming with…
more......
Burundi: A Girl Named 'Good News'
Burundi 2010 © Sune Juul-Sorensen/MSF
Mary Nicizanye and her mother sit with Mary's newborn baby girl, Nduwakez, at the Kabezi birth center.
Mary Nicizanye, 30, is one of thousands of women who have received emergency obstetric care at the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins San Frontières (MSF) birth center in Kabezi, just south of Burundi's capital, Bujumbura.
Today, drops of sweat are running down her neck, but her eyes are lit up. Mary is recovering at the center four days after giving birth to a little girl here. Even before she…
more......
Haitians Facing 'Intolerable Breach of Human Dignity'
Haiti 2010 © Mashid Mohadjerin
A family takes shelter in one of several extremely crowded displaced persons camps in and around Port-au-Prince.
© Bruno De Cock/MSF
Christopher Stokes
© Julie Rémy
Colette Gadenne
Colette Gadenne, who has been managing Doctors Without Borders/Médecins San Frontières (MSF) activities in Haiti over the last few weeks, and Christopher Stokes, General Director of MSF in Brussels, recently returned from Haiti. Almost two months after…
more......
[Speech] Doctors Without Borders Testimony: U.S. Trade Law Penalizing Countries for Efforts to Expand Access to Affordable Lifesaving Medicines
Background Document
Download Document [83 KB]
Emi MacLean, US Director of the Access to Essential Medicines Campaign at Doctors Without Borders, testifed at the US International Trade Commission on March 3, about the effect that a provision in the U.S. Trade Act is having on U.S. global health policy and international efforts to expand access to affordable medicines. Doctors Without Borders, which works in over 60 countries, and treats neglected tropical diseases and more than 140,000 HIV/AIDS patients in the developing world, spoke…
more......
[Slideshow] Rohingya in Bangladesh: Unrecognized, Unprotected, and Unassisted
Haiti: MSF Expanding Post-Operative Services in Response to Growing Need
Haiti 2010 © Gregory Vendendaelen/MSF
Seven weeks after the earthquake of January 12 left up to 300,000 people injured, medical needs remain immense in Haiti. “The immediate emergency phase may be over, but the long-term work is just beginning, and it’s no less an emergency,” said MSF Haiti Head of Mission Karline Kleijer.
Thousands of injured people remain in need of long-term care but some of the health providers that responded to the initial emergency phase of the crisis are starting to leave the country and discharge their patients.…
more......
[Slideshow] Haiti: A Family in the Ruins
Chile: MSF Assessing the Situation in Areas Most Affected by the Earthquake
Several teams from Doctors Without Borders/Médecins San Frontières (MSF) are assessing the needs in the Maule and Bio Bio regions of Chile, both of which were hard hit by the 8.8–magnitude earthquake that struck last Saturday.
The earthquake’s impact zone covers nearly 1,000 kilometers along Chile’s coastal regions; many areas there have yet to be evaluated. Our teams are in contact with the Chilean government, which has thus far responded efficiently to the disaster. MSF will focus its efforts in the more isolated areas that rescue workers have not yet reached.
An MSF…
more......
Chile: First MSF Team Arriving to Assist Earthquake Survivors
The first members of an exploratory team from Doctors Without Borders/Médecins San Frontières (MSF) have already arrived in Santiago, the capital city of Chile, in order to assess the needs of victims after an 8.8–magnitude earthquake struck the country early Saturday morning. Other MSF workers will be arriving today, February 28.
MSF is already in contact with Chilean government authorities to coordinate the relief effort. The first team will travel today from Santiago to the Maule region, south of the capital, to assess the situation in that area, which was hit hard by the earthquake. The…
more......
MSF Sends Teams to Chile to Evaluate the Situation After Today�s Earthquake
The medical-humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins San Frontières (MSF) is sending an exploratory team to assess the needs of the victims after an earthquake of 8.8 magnitude struck Chile early Saturday morning, causing serious damages in several areas of the country.
The MSF team, including a doctor, a nurse and logisticians coming from Argentina, Bolivia and Panama, is being deployed to Chile in order to better evaluate the needs of the population. The team from Argentina--composed of a doctor, a logistician and a nurse--should arrive Saturday night to the capital of the country, Santiago de Chile, crossing through…
more......
[Podcast] MSF Frontline Reports
Meet Natacha, a mother in Burkina Faso who struggles for her children's survival every year during the hunger gap; hear about MSF’s work in some of Zimbabwe's prisons; and get an update on the urgent needs in Haiti.
more......
[Video] Zimbabwean Migrants in South Africa Face Abuse on Both Sides of the Border
[Press Release] White House Called on to Expand Global Health Initiative
New York, February 24, 2010 � The Obama administration�s Global Health Initiative (GHI) does not go far enough in combating the most lethal neglected tropical diseases, which affect an estimated one billion people, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) said today. MSF and DNDi call on the US government to expand the GHI to encompass treatment programs for all neglected tropical diseases, while supporting a research and development pipeline that will produce more effective, safer, and accessible medicines to patients as quickly as possible.
In…
more......
Haiti: The Thinking Behind the Hard Choices
Haiti 2010 © Julie Remy
MSF surgeon Paul McMaster tends to a patient at a makeshift operating theater outside Carrefour Hospital, five days after the January 12 earthquake in Haiti.
The conditions confronting Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) surgeons Angeleke Saridakis and Paul McMaster in the aftermath of the January 12 earthquake in Haiti were as daunting as any they’d ever encountered. Working day and night in a devastated city, they and their colleagues manned makeshift operating theaters while contending with shortages of equipment, electricity, personnel, food, and water.
They could offer little…
more......
[Ideas & Opinions] Fighting Deadly Neglected Tropical Diseases: Opportunities to Expand U.S. Impact in Control of NTDs
Download PDF
Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) website
Over 1 billion people are infected with one of the 14 diseases defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as neglected tropical diseases
(NTDs). These are the most common infections in the 2.7 billion people living on less than $2 a day and affects those often marginalized and
forgotten by governments, left to suffer in silence. NTDs are diverse but all cause severe disability or death, and bring a major economic burden
on endemic…
more......
MSF Operational Update � Haiti Earthquake Response
Haiti 2010 / © Caroline Livio
Haitian physiotherapsit Paul Gerard with a patient in one of MSF's rehabitliation and post-operative facilities.
Numbers as of February 18
International staff: 393
National staff: 2,784
Operating theaters: 12
Beds: 940
Patients treated: 28,251
Surgical interventions: 2,963
Kits distributed: 11,550
Tents distributed: 4,614
Number of sites: 20 + 7 sites mobile clinics
Mental health consults: 2,825
In the weeks following the January 12 earthquake in Haiti, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins San Frontières (MSF) teams raced to provide lifesaving surgery and emergency medical…
more......
[Special Report] Briefing Paper: Experience Treating The Most Neglected of the Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs)
Download PDF
Related Fact Sheets
Chagas Disease
Sleeping Sickness
Kala Azar
Buruli Ulcer
MSF/DNDi Policy Paper
Fighting Deadly Neglected Tropical Diseases: Opportunities to Expand U.S. Impact in Control of NTDs
Read online Download PDF
Over one billion people are infected with one or more of the 14 diseases defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). These are major parasitic, bacterial and viral infections that are…
more......
[Transcript] Congressional Malaria & NTD Caucus Briefing: Controlling Deadly Neglected Tropical Diseases
Listen:
Congressional Briefing Agenda and Speaker Bios
Briefing Paper
Read online |
Download PDF
Transcription coming soon.
Speaker Biographies
Mary LinehanNTD Control Program Operations Director,
RTI
Mary Linehan is a senior international health specialist in the International Development Group and operations director of the Neglected Tropical Disease Control Program. Ms. Linehan has more than 18 years of international work experience in program management; technical assistance to ministries of health; and research for maternal, infant, and child health and nutrition. Special…
more......
Victory for Access to Medicines as Bayer Loses Lawsuit in India
An Indian court has stopped the international pharmaceutical company Bayer�s latest attempt to introduce new measures to prevent generic competition in India. By ruling against Bayer on February 9, 2010, the Delhi High Court has refused to undermine measures in India�s patent laws that help ensure access to more affordable essential medicines for patients in need.
�We are delighted that Bayer�s lawsuit was rejected�at the moment in India we are seeing a number of multinational pharmaceutical companies trying to use litigation to stifle generic competition,� said Dr. Tido von Schoen-Angerer of MSF�s Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines. �By…
more......
[Special Report] Bangladesh: Violent Crackdown Fuels Humanitarian Crisis for Unrecognized Rohingya Refugees
Bangladesh 2010 © Giulio Di Sturco/VII Mentor
Thousands more stateless Rohingya people have fled to Kutupalong makeshift camp in Cox's Bazar District after being driven from their homes.
Summary
Stateless Rohingya people in Bangladesh are currently victims to unprecedented levels of violence and attempts at forced repatriation. Recent weeks have seen thousands of people arrive at Kutupalong makeshift camp as they flee what appears to be a violent crackdown on the Rohingya presence in the country. At its clinic in Kutupalong, in Cox’s Bazar District in the south of the country, Doctors Without…
more......
[Press Release] Bangladesh: Ethnic Rohingya People Victims of a Violent Crackdown
Bangkok/New York, February 18, 2010 -- A violent crackdown against stateless Rohingya in Bangladesh is forcing thousands of people to flee in fear. Driven from their homes throughout Cox’s Bazar District by local authorities and citizens, many have sought refuge at a makeshift camp in Kutupalong, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said today.
MSF is treating victims of beatings and harassment, including people the Bangladeshi Border Force has attempted to forcibly repatriate to Myanmar. As camp numbers continue to swell, conditions pose a significant risk to people’s health.
In a report released today MSF…
more......
Pakistan: MSF Distributing Aid to People Displaced by Fighting in Kurram Agency
Pakistan 2010 © MSF
MSF has distributed living kits to more than 35,000 people who have fled the ongoing conflict in Kurram Agency.
Over the last couple of weeks, Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) conducted a distribution of basic relief items to more than 35,000 people currently displaced inside Kurram Agency, in the Federally Administrated Tribal Area (FATA) of Pakistan. Since November 2009, Central Kurram Agency has been the theater of an intense armed conflict. One of the consequences for the local population has been to flee to safer places, notably…
more......
Afghanistan: Bleak Living Conditions for IDPs In Kabul
Afghanistan 2010 © Dario Chiappatopi
Living conditions are bleak for Afghans taking refuge in Kabul's Baghrami market.
The blocks of cold cement that make up Baghrami market in east Kabul have become an accidental place of refuge for hundreds of families who had to leave their homes in Kapisa province to the north in order to escape the fighting there. These families arrived in Kabul a few months ago, but they are just the latest of many thousands of people who have arrived in Kabul in the last few years due to the widespread…
more......
Haiti: Rebuilding Lives, Day by Day
Haiti 2010 © Mashid Mohadjerin
Two-year old Claudia, above, is the youngest and most inspiring patient on the Jacmel Hospital's post-operative ward.
“I came back from school, did my homework,” remembers a tearful Jean-Rosemay, who is barely 14, “and just before five o’clock, I sat in front of the TV to watch the day’s episode of Frijolito when the walls fell on us, killing my mother and my three sisters.” This was the last day of her life as she knew it, but only the first of the two she spent under her family’s…
more......
A Day in Dabaab
Click on the image above to meet four Somali refugees at Dagahaley camp in Kenya.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is still very concerned about the situation in one of the world’s most congested camp complexes, located in Dadaab, in northeast Kenya. MSF has been providing medical care for one year in Dadaab's Dagahaley camp, and while there have been some improvements during that time, the camp remains overcrowded, and refugees are only receiving the bare minimum to survive.
“In one year, we have seen improvements. Refugees are now…
more......
[Voice from the Field] Haiti: "We are not out of the emergency phase yet"
Dr. Marie-Pierre Allié, president of Médecins Sans Frontières-France, who recently returned from a field visit to Haiti, analyses the situation there one month after the disaster. At present, areas of concern include the vacuum caused by the withdrawal of some of the international medical teams who rushed to scene after the earthquake, the ongoing lack of shelter, and the slow pace of aid distribution.
One month after the earthquake, what is the situation in Haiti?
The extent of the destruction that I observed in the field is very unusual. This disaster leaves a profound impression even…
more......
[Slideshow] Haiti: One Month On, A Look Back in Photos
[Video] Haiti: One Month After the Earthquake
[Press Release] Heat-stable ritonavir approved
Paris/New York, February 12, 2010—Both the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have recently approved the long-awaited heat-stable 100mg tablet version of ritonavir, the antiretroviral booster drug produced by Abbott Laboratories.
The market authorisation of a heat-stable version of ritonavir as a separate pill finally ends both the stranglehold by Abbott on the treatment options available to people living with HIV/AIDS and the medical double standards the company has promoted by failing to prioritise the development of safer versions of its medicines.
Protease inhibitors (PIs) are the…
more......
[Press Release] Indian Court Gives Boost to Access to Medicines as Latest Appeal by Bayer is Rejected
New Delhi/Geneva – February 9, 2010 – In a welcome move for access to medicines, the Delhi High Court has rejected the appeal filed by the German pharmaceutical company Bayer Corporation against an earlier court order which had rejected the implementation of a drug regulatory system which essentially linked registration of medicines to their patent status.
In August 2009, the Delhi High Court had rejected the petition filed by Bayer Corporation, seeking to stop the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) from granting marketing approval to a generic version of a cancer drug patented by Bayer.
more......
Haiti: Steps Toward Recovery
Haiti 2010 / © William Daniels
MSF's Dr. Karen Lind explains the amputation procedure and describes a prosthesis to Jerry
Jerry is seven years old. On January 12, he was seriously injured in the earthquake that devastated his hometown of Port-au-Prince, suffering a severe open fracture to his femur when his house collapsed.
Jerry’s mother, Louismerre, lost two of her five children in the quake. Determined not to see a third child die, she immediately brought Jerry to a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital for emergency medical care.
MSF staff started…
more......
[Audio Slideshow] Haiti: "I was ready to go home, but then we had an earthquake"
[Video] Month in Focus - January 2010
Haiti: Two Weeks of Emergency Care in Review
Haiti 2010 © Julie Remy
Driving through Port-au-Prince, just days after the earthquake.
As medical assistance moves into a second phase, with conditions finally improving for the practice of surgery and medicine, three MSF staff members describe how the teams treated patients in the ruins of the Delmas district in the immediate aftermath of the January 12 earthquake in Haiti.
The Earth Shakes
It was the end of the day in Haiti, and Pacot, the rehabilitation centre had closed its doors. The pharmacy was locked up for the night. The entire MSF…
more......
[Podcast] MSF Frontline Reports
From Port-au-Prince we bring you a report on MSF's emergency response to the Haiti earthquake; in the first three weeks MSF treated more than 11,000 patients. You'll hear from Haitian and international staff, as well as patients, on the ground.
more......
[Voice from the Field] Haiti: "It's Going to be a Very Long Recovery"
Haiti 2010/@Julie Remy
MSF International President Dr. Christophe Fournier consults with Haitian colleagues.
Dr. Christophe Fournier, the International President of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) went to Port-au-Prince to offer his moral support to Haitian staff and emergency teams. Just over two weeks after the earthquake, he described his impressions to MSF's Avril Benoit:
What I’ve seen is doctors, nurses, surgeons, logisticians, being able to treat hundreds, not to say thousands of patients–first in the streets, on sidewalks, behind or in front of the collapsed hospitals, in conditions that…
more......
[Video] Gaza, One Year On
[Video] Migrants Struggle in Mayote
[Video] Fleeing Violence in the DRC
[Voice from the Field] Haiti: An Anaesthetist�s 10-day Mission
Haiti 2010 © Ron Haviv/VII
Emergency surgery being performed in a makeshift operating theater outside Trinite hospital in Port-au-Prince in the immediate aftermath of the January 12 earthquake in Haiti
Day 1, Wednesday, January 13: Just a Few Hours to Decide
“I hear about the disaster on Wednesday morning, and the first phone call come through at the hospital a few hours later. MSF wants to know if I can leave for Haiti right away. I’ve already been there on mission twice, in 2006 and 2008, working in MSF's trauma centre in…
more......
Pakistan: MSF Teams Treat Wounded After Explosion in Lower Dir
Following the explosion in Lower Dir district, North West Frontier Province, Pakistan, on Wednesday, February 3, Ministry of Health and Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams working in the emergency room in Timurgara district hospital received 126 wounded people, including children. “Most of the wounded have shrapnel related injuries all over their bodies, on the face, abdomen and feet,” explained Dr.Ashraf Alam, medical officer for MSF in Timurgara. “We received 12 people in severe life threatening condition. Five of them have already undergone immediate surgery. It was a heavy blast and quite close to a school where children were…
more......
[Press Release] Mogadishu: 66 Women And Children Injured By Indiscriminate Shelling
Nairobi/New York, February 3, 2010—As fierce fighting once again grips Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has admitted 89 people suffering from blast injuries to its hospital in the Daynile area of the city between January 29 and February 2. Of these, 66 were women and children.
“The numbers of injured women and children that we received in just over 72 hours is not ‘collateral damage,’ it’s a total lack of regard for the safety of civilians,” said MSF Head of Mission Axelle de la Motte St. Pierre. “The situation in Mogadishu…
more......
[Press Release] On the Other Side of the Wall: MSF Releases Second Report on Italy�s Detention Centers for Migrants
Rome, February 2, 2010 – More than ten years since Italy’s migrant centers were set up, their management still seems to be conditioned by an emergency type approach. Services seem to have been organized to satisfy only the most basic needs, with no regard for creating acceptable conditions for the psychological and physical well-being of detainees. Since the new regulation came into effect extending the maximum period of detention from two to six months, there have been no planned improvements in the distribution of services to migrant populations.
These are the findings of a survey conducted…
more......
Haiti: New Life Amid the Rubble
Haiti 2010 / © William Daniels
Djenny and her newborn son, Mike, who was born a week after the earthquake, lying in the maternity ward of Chancerelle Hospital.
Immediately following Haiti’s devastating earthquake Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams worked around the clock to meet the overwhelming demand for severe trauma or orthopedic surgery. At the same time, MSF also provided emergency obstetrics care for pregnant mothers, including performing more ‘routine’ life-saving operations, such as Caesarean sections.
After the earthquake, 18-year old Djenny was one of the first women…
more......
Haiti: Operating Theaters Still Busy, But Nature of Injuries Starting to Change
Haiti 2010 © Bruno Stevens/Cosmos
Though MSF teams are seeing fewer injuries directly related to the earthquake, the medical needs remain immense.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) operating theaters and emergency wards in Haiti are still busy. The two teams in Leogane, for instance, are carrying out an average of 30 operations each day, as are the teams at the new hospital in Carrefour. The inflatable hospital in St Louis is still seeing new cases of compound fractures, as are the surgeons working in Choscal, who’ve been receiving victims of shooting and car…
more......
Burundi: MSF Responding to Alarming Rise in Malaria Infections in Kayanza Province
Burundi 2010/© Jean-Michel van Laere
MSF teams in Burundi's Kayanza province assessing and treating patients in the midst of a rise in the incidence of malaria.
In recent months, as heavy rains have fallen and mosquito populations have grown, malaria has been on the increase in the northern province of Kayanza, on the border with Rwanda. At the end of December, health authorities called upon Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) to conduct an assessment. MSF’s assessment was that incidence of the disease is indeed higher, which prompted the organization to reinforce its response…
more......
Haiti: As Situation Evolves, So Do Services
Haiti 2010 @ Benoit Finck
A shipping container-turned-medical facility in Port-au-Prince.
Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) continues to focus primarily on providing medical services in hospitals and clinics in Haiti, but teams are also adapting to the evolving situation on the ground.
In Port-au-Prince, for instance, surgeons at the two school buildings now serving as the “New Carrefour Hospital”—the quake and its aftershocks rendered the original hospital unsafe—performed 40 operations on Wednesday. In the Carrefour Feuille neighborhood, where 9,000 people are living in temporary shelters, a team consisting of two nurses, a…
more......
[Voice from the Field] Haiti: Immediate and Long-term Health Needs
Listen to Brigg Reilly describe the situation in Haiti:
2008 © Joshua Lutz/Redux
Brigg Reilley, MSF epidemiologist and member of MSF-USA Board of Directors
Brigg Reilley is an epidemiologist with Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Haiti. He’s gathering information on the medical needs and issues MSF teams are seeing. The data helps create a bigger picture of what people’s healthcare needs are now and how they may evolve. This knowledge allows MSF staff to continue to effectively treat survivors in the present and to plan for the critical…
more......
[Video] Haiti: Conditions for Staff, Patients Improve
After enduring delays in receiving urgent medical supplies and equipment, as well as continuous aftershocks that threatened already-damaged facilities, MSF staff are now treating patients inside an inflatable hospital.
more......
Haiti: MSF Teams Adapting to Needs on the Ground
Haiti 2010 © Julie Remy
MSF staff member talks to Astride Louissaint, a patient trying to deal with her own injuries and the loss of her mother, who's been missing since the earthquake
Video
Haiti: Two Weeks After the Earthquake, Needs Are Changing
The core medical activities in Haiti are still very much focused on treating people who were injured in the January 12 earthquake, with surgery continuing and post-operative care expanding. But as Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Emergency Medical Coordinator Rosa…
more......
[Voice from the Field] Haiti: Courage, Selflessness, and Discovery
Isabelle Jeanson has worked in communications with Doctors without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) since 2003. She has spent time with MSF missions in Colombia, Russia, Nigeria, and Papua New Guinea, and she served as an emergency press officer in Sri Lanka following the 2004 tsunami. She joined the emergency team in Haiti 48 hours after the January 12 earthquake struck, and filed this report on January 26:
In any tragedy there are miraculous moments. Today I learned of one of those moments and was witness to another.
Haiti 2010 © MSF/Isabelle Jeanson
Christobal, an…
more......
[Voice from the Field] Treating Crush Syndrome in Haiti With Lifesaving Dialysis
Haiti 2010 © MSF
MSF nephrologist Stefaan Maddens is working to provide crush syndrome patients with dialysis treatment at Port-au-Prince General Hospital.
The risk of renal failure is high for survivors of Haiti’s devastating earthquake who have severely crushed limbs or dangerously infected wounds. Thus, a key component of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières’s (MSF) emergency response is carried out by its team of nephrologists specializing in kidney diseases. Just after the earthquake struck, MSF sent a nine-person medical team to the Port-au-Prince General Hospital and then flew in four dialysis machines to…
more......
Haiti: Surgery, Post-Op Care Remain Most Pressing Medical Needs
Nearly two weeks after the January 12 earthquake, the most pressing needs Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams in Haiti face are patients who still require surgery and the growing number of patients who now require post-operative care. In Port-au-Prince, Choscal hospital in the Cite Soleil slum is still working around-the-clock, operating on an average of 20 to 25 people each day. In the town of Leogane, where MSF recently started performing surgeries in the local hospital, surgeons have completed 30 operations and at least 40 more are pending. In Martissant, where an operating theater opened almost immediately after…
more......
[Video] Haiti: Two Weeks After the Earthquake, Needs Are Changing
MSF Activities in Darfur and Northern Sudan
Click to see a full-page map of current MSF activities in Northern Sudan and the Darfur region.
Overview
Following the expulsion of the Dutch and French sections of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) by the Sudanese government in March 2009, three MSF sections continue working in Northern Sudan, in the western region of Darfur, Al-Gedaref State, and the Red Sea State. Today, MSF provides a range of services, including primary and secondary healthcare, as well as responding to emergencies as they arise. Security remains a pressing issue in Darfur,…
more......
[Voice from the Field] Sudan: Searching For Gold Under Bricks in Northern Darfur
2004 Sudan © Juan Carlos Tomasi/MSF
The Shangil Tobaya IDP camp in northern Darfur, home to thousands driven from their homes by the conflict.
"Shangili Tobaya Talgi Dahabaya" is a rhyme from the opening song of an old Sudanese television series that takes place in the town of Shangil Tobaya. In Sudanese colloquial Arabic, the words “Shangil Tobaya” mean “flip a brick,” and the popular rhyme translates as “flip a brick, you will find gold.” I heard that rhyme repeatedly when telling family, friends or colleagues that during my four-day visit to Northern…
more......
[Press Release] Pakistan: MSF shocked by forced evacuation of IDPs in North West Frontier Province
Islamabad, January 26, 2010 - International medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is deeply shocked by the forced evacuation of approximately 7,000 displaced people from Munda in the Lower Dir district of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province. On January 25, MSF teams based in Munda learned that armed military personnel were forcibly evacuating families from both the Munda camp for displaced people and the market building where MSF has been working for the past two months.
Since early November 2009, 450 families have been living in this camp set up by MSF. An…
more......
[Slideshow] Working Through Disaster in Haiti
[Video] Haitian Staff Determined to Help
[Voice from the Field] Haiti: 11 Days After the Earthquake, Some Changes Visible
Haiti 2010 © Julie Remy
An MSF psychologist assesses patients' mental health needs at Martissant hospital in Port-au-Prince.
Isabelle Jeanson has worked in communications with Doctors without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) since 2003. She has spent time with MSF missions in Colombia, Russia, Nigeria, and Papua New Guinea, and she served as an emergency press officer in Sri Lanka following the 2004 tsunami. She joined the emergency team in Haiti 48 hours after the January 12 earthquake struck, and filed this report on January 23:
Things are slowly changing. In fact,…
more......
Haitian Staff Determined To Help Their People
Haiti 2010 © Julie Remy
MSF surgeon Dr. Philippe Brouard, during a rare quiet moment at Trinite Hospital.
Video
Haitian Staff Determined To Help Their People
PORT-AU-PRINCE – Haitian surgeon Dr. Philippe Brouard has worked with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) at Trinité hospital in Port-au-Prince since 2006. On January 13, the morning after the earthquake, he came to work at the trauma surgery centre only to find that most of Trinité had collapsed. Two of his colleagues and several patients had…
more......
Haiti: Greenpeace Donates Use of Ship to MSF
The environmental organization Greenpeace generously donated the use of its ship, Esperanza, to assist Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) with its emergency response in Haiti.
This donation enabled MSF to transport it's most urgent life-saving medical supplies as quickly as possible by air, while Esperanza made the slower journey to Port-au-Prince carrying other less-urgent, though essential, supplies, such as blankets, buckets, and soap. The ship also carried a freight of thousands of liters of fuel, a commodity in low supply in Haiti since the earthquake struck.
Esperanza docked in Port-au-Prince on Saturday, January…
more......
Haiti: Going Beyond Emergency Care
Haiti 2010 © Julie Remy
Patients who received emergency surgery after the earthquake in Haiti, like this girl in MSF's Martissant medical facility, now need post-operative care as well.
In the immediate aftermath of the January 12 earthquake in Haiti, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) focused on emergency surgery and life-saving interventions. Now, though, some MSF teams are seeing more patients who need care for pre-existing conditions and for infections or complications affecting wounds they couldn’t get treated properly. This is not to say that the overall need for medical services is declining.…
more......
Haiti: Focused on Emergency Treatment, Teams Also Begin New Efforts
Haiti 2010 © Julie Remy
An MSF patient receives dialysis treatment at the Port-au-Prince General Hospital.
The Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams in Port-au-Prince and beyond are still mainly occupied with treating and operating on those who were injured in the earthquake nine days ago. That has meant a continuing focus on their operating theatres in the larger MSF hospital structures in the capital. But there are new challenges being taken on, too, with the start of mobile clinics in the capital, of water provision, and of efforts to plan for post-operative…
more......
Haiti: MSF Teams Going Mobile to Reach Patients
Haiti 2010 © Julie Remy
An MSF psychologist interviews patients at the Martissant health facility in Port-au-Prince.
In the aftermath of the January 12 earthquake in Haiti, Port-au-Prince’s working hospitals were flooded with people with serious injuries that required immediate emergency care. Those who either couldn’t reach a medical facility or who were contending with more routine illnesses often went without treatment. In recent days, however, while continuing to perform operations at its fixed sites, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has started sending mobile teams into communities in and around the capital to…
more......
Pakistan: In Munda, 2,100 Children Vaccinated for Measles; More Needs to Be Done For Those Displaced by Violence
Pakistan 2009 © Jobi Bieber
A husband and wife whose home was destroyed during a bombing raid have been living in a tent in Munda camp since mid-2009.
On Tuesday, January 12, in Munda, in Lower Dir district of the North West Frontier Province, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Department of Health staff started a measles vaccination campaign for the displaced population under 15 years of age. In three days, 2,100 children were vaccinated by three teams located in different areas around Munda camp. The vaccines and cold chain were provided by…
more......
[Video] Inside MSF's Inflatable Hospital
Take a tour of one part of the inflatable hospital Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) will set up in Haiti.
more......
[Video] Haiti: MSF Logistics Team Setting Up Inflatable Hospital
On January 20, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) logistical teams worked to set up MSF's inflatable hospital on the grounds of a school in Port-au-Prince. Staff hope to be able to start treating patients inside the structure on January 22.
more......
[Voice from the Field] Haiti: "This Overwhleming Force"
Haiti 2010 © Julie Rémy
Patients awaiting treatment at Carrefour Hospital in Port-au-Prince.
Isabelle Jeanson has worked in communications with Doctors without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) since 2003. She has spent time with MSF missions in Colombia, Russia, Nigeria, and Papua New Guinea, and she served as an emergency press officer in Sri Lanka following the 2004 tsunami. She joined the emergency team in Haiti 48 hours after the January 12 earthquake struck, and filed this report on the morning of January 21:
I had the scare of my life Wednesday morning. I had…
more......
[Voice from the Field] Haiti: Strong Aftershock Was "Frightening for Everyone"
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) emergency physician Sebastian Spencer was working at Choscal hospital in Cite Soleil, Port-au-Prince, on January 20 when the area sustained a strong aftershock—one week after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake destroyed much of the capital. Dr. Spencer had just finished his second consecutive, hectic, 14-hour shift at the hospital hours before much-needed and delayed medical supplies that had been flown into the Dominican Republic arrived by truck. Here he describes what happened:
Listen to Dr. Spencer describe the aftershock situation in Haiti:
…
more......
Haiti: MSF Rushing to Meet Patient Needs
Haiti 2010 © Julie Remy
Staff in Port-au-Prince starts to unload materials for MSF's inflatable hospital; when complete, it will have two operating theaters and room for 100 beds.
MSF is providing surgical and first-aid assistance in several areas of Port-au-Prince and is assessing medical needs outside the capital as well. Click on the map for a full-page view of where MSF is curently working.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières staff in wards and operating theatres in Haiti are still working through very…
more......
[Slideshow] Haiti: "This is a devastated community"
[Video] Six MSF Planes Carrying Vital Medical Supplies Are Re-routed
Six Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) cargo planes loaded with vital medical material like antibiotics have been redirected to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. This will delay MSF staff's ability to treat patients who urgently need it.
more......
Haiti: Treatment Continues Through Powerful Aftershock
Haiti 2010 © Julie Remy
The entrance of Choscal Hospital, in Cite Soleil, which houses one of the ten operating theaters MSF has established in Haiti since the earthquake hit.
On Wednesday morning, as Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams in Haiti continued to work through long queues of patients waiting for treatment and surgery, the country was shaken anew by a powerful aftershock. In Choscal hospital, where MSF has been running two operating theaters, patients were so alarmed by the tremors that they had to be relocated into tents outside the building.…
more......
[Press Release] Somalia: Emergency Service Continues Despite Violence
Somalia 2009 © MSF
Somali women and children await care at an MSF feeding programme in Galcayo, Somalia.
Nairobi, 19 January 2010 - As ongoing fighting in the Hiraan and Galgaduud regions of Somalia takes an ever greater toll on civilians, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has continued to support two hospitals in Guri El and Belet Weyne. In a recent three-day period, from January 10 to January 12, 111 wounded people were admitted for treatment, the majority of them suffering from multiple fractures, abdominal wounds, and chest injuries. On January 12, two…
more......
[Video] MSF Teams Facing an 'Unprecedented Challenge' in Haiti
Needs for urgent medical care mount while obstacles to receiving much-needed supplies continue.
more......
[Press Release] MSF Plane with Lifesaving Medical Supplies Diverted Again from Landing in Haiti
Port-au-Prince, January 19, 2010 – A Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) cargo plane carrying 12 tons of medical equipment, including drugs, surgical supplies and two dialysis machines, was turned away three times from Port-au-Prince airport since Sunday night despite repeated assurances of its ability to land there. This 12-ton cargo was part of the contents of an earlier plane carrying a total of 40 tons of supplies that was blocked from landing on Sunday morning. Since January 14, MSF has had five planes diverted from the original destination of Port-au-Prince to the Dominican Republic. These planes carried a total…
more......
[Op-Eds & Articles] Wall Street Journal Op-Ed: Trying to Save Lives in Port-Au-Prince
By Jeanne Cabeza and Michelle Chouinard
I thought I was going to die when the earth shook. I was at Pacot, the Doctors Without Borders physical rehabilitation center in Port-au-Prince. Five minutes after the quake, people were banging on our door in need of help. There were four of us, including a fourth year nursing student with minor injuries, and we worked all night. The janitor helped with bandages. It was quickly overwhelming from a medical standpoint: Within a few hours there were hundreds of people in need of surgery.
I see some people and can't believe…
more......
[Voice from the Field] Haiti: Saving as Many People as We Can
Haiti 2010 © Julie Remy
A child is stablized after emergency surgery in an MSF hospital in the Carrefour distrcit of Port-au-Prince on January 17.
Isabelle Jeanson has worked in communications with Doctors without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) since 2003. She has spent time with MSF missions in Colombia, Russia, Nigeria, and Papua New Guinea, and she served as an emergency press officer in Sri Lanka following the 2004 tsunami. She joined the emergency team in Haiti 48 hours after the January 12 earthquake struck, and filed this report on the morning of…
more......
[Slideshow] Haiti: 500 Patients Treated in 24 Hours at Carrefour Hospital
Haiti: Needs Grow as Efforts Expand, Resupply Needs Mount
Haiti 2010 © Julie Remy
Doctors tend to a patient at the makeshift treatment center MSF set up in the Carrefour section of Port-au-Prince. MSF teams continue to seek out facilities in which they can provide emergency care to those who need it most.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams in Port-au-Prince are still under great pressure. While providing emergency care to as many people as possible, they are also searching for additional facilities that can serve as operating theaters and trying to get in more supplies. At the same time, MSF…
more......
[Transcript] Teleconference on Haiti Earthquake on January 18, 2010
© Joshua Lutz/Redux
Benoit Leduc, MSF operations manager for Haiti
Benoit Leduc, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) operations manager for Haiti, and Loris de Filippi, MSF operational coordinator in Port-au-Prince, participated in a teleconference with press regarding MSF's response to the January 12, 2010, earthquake.
Listen:
Download
Avril Benoit: Welcome to the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) media briefing. I’m Avril, director of communications based in Toronto. My name is A-V-R-I-L. Last name is B-E-N-O-I-T.
The purpose of the briefing is to…
more......
[Video] Haiti: MSF Teams Overwhelmed by Needs
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staff work 24 hours a day to treat as many patients injured in the January 12 earthquake as possible, but the needs are huge and there are delays in receiving crucial supplies.
more......
[Slideshow] Haiti: MSF Working to Meet Medical Needs
[Voice from the Field] Haiti: "Patients who were not critical three days ago are now in critical phases"
© Bruno Stevens / Cosmos
People grieve in a market area of Port-au-Prince three days after an earthquake struck the city.
Isabelle Jeanson, a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) emergency communications officer, has been with the MSF teams in Port-au-Prince since January 15. Here she describes the stuation as of January 17:
The situation remains critical. Few aid agencies are in place. Hundreds of bodies are still stuck in buildings. In the entire city, I've only seen about four or five trucks and cranes removing pieces of collapsed buildings so they can…
more......
Haiti: Surgical Teams Work Around the Clock; Assessments of Other Affected Areas Planned
Haiti 2010 © Julie Remy
In Choscal hospital in Port-au-Prince MSF staff performed an amputation on a 12-year-old girl whose leg had been injured. Surgical staff have been working continuously since January 15.
On the fifth day of their response to the disaster in Haiti, the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams on the ground remain focused on trying to cope with the huge demand for lifesaving surgery. Teams are stretching their existing operating theatres to the limit by working around the clock. At the same time staff are trying to create more…
more......
[Press Release] Doctors Without Borders Cargo Plane With Full Hospital and Staff Blocked From Landing in Port-au-Prince
Port-au-Prince/Paris /New York, 17 January 2009—Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) urges that its cargo planes carrying essential medical and surgical material be allowed to land in Port-au-Prince in order to treat thousands of wounded waiting for vital surgical operations. Priority must be given immediately to planes carrying lifesaving equipment and medical personnel.
Despite guarantees, given by the United Nations and the US Defense Department, an MSF cargo plane carrying an inflatable surgical hospital was blocked from landing in Port-au-Prince on Saturday, and was re-routed to Samana, in Dominican Republic. All material from the cargo is now being sent by…
more......
[Slideshow] In Haiti, MSF Treats Earthquake Survivors
Haiti: MSF Surgical Activities Are Non-Stop; Needs Remain Huge
Haiti 2010 © Julie Remy
MSF staff perform surgery in a makeshift operating theatre on the grounds of La Trinité trauma hospital in Port-au-Prince.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) surgical units in Port-au-Prince continue to work around the clock to treat the vast numbers of patients with serious injuries from the January 12 earthquake. Prioritizing the most serious cases, the teams have been performing caesarian sections and amputations. Experienced MSF medical staff say they have never seen so many serious injuries.
An MSF surgical team that relocated to Chocsal Hospital after its…
more......
Haiti: MSF Treats 2,000 Patients; Working to Expand Surgical Capacity
© Julie Remy
More than 2,000 patients have been treated so far at Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) locations in Port-au-Prince. Teams are now focusing their attention on expanding surgical capacity, as needs are huge. More than 300 patients have been transferred from MSF's Martissant health center to Choscal hospital, a facility in the Cité Soleil district, where they are expected to receive surgery soon. The rest of the medical staff on the ground are still responding to the hundreds of people at their clinics who need immediate first aid and more…
more......
Haiti: Logistics of MSF�s Intervention
Laurent Dedieu is a logistics supervisor for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) projects in Haiti. Since the earthquake that hit Port-au-Prince on January 12, he has been in frequent contact with the teams on the ground and helping to organize the logistics of MSF’s response. Here he describes the logistical challenges the teams are dealing with right now.
What are the logistical problems the teams are dealing with today?
Pakistan 2005 © MSF
Above, MSF used an inflatable hospital in Pakistan in 2005 consisting seven tents. The set-up in Port-au-Prince will include nine…
more......
[Transcript] Teleconference on Emergency Response to Haiti Earthquake
Stefano Zannini, head of mission for Doctors without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Haiti, spoke at a press teleconference about MSF's activities in Haiti following the January 12 earthquake. Here are clips from the January 15 teleconference:
"What I can see at the moment in Port au Prince is plenty of people looking basically for medical care, food, and shelter. These are the most important things people are looking for at the moment." —Stefano Zannini
Listen:
Download
"Streets are crowded (with) persons looking for help and trying to find their families or their friends. I can see…
more......
Haiti: MSF Treats More Than 1,000 Patients; Inflatable Hospital on the Way
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) medical teams in Port-au-Prince are treating large numbers of people who suffered fractures, head injuries and other major trauma during and after the January 12 earthquake.
MSF's Inflatable Hospitals
See how MSF used inflatable hospitals after the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan. MSF uses inflatable hospitals to provide critical medical care in disaster areas. Portable operating theaters, they can be readied in enormous crates and quickly loaded onto planes. These kits comprise beds, rolling trays, respirators - all the equipment and medicines required to provide effective lifesaving surgery.
More than 1,000 patients have…
more......
Haiti: MSF Teams Working to Fill Medical Care Gap After Earthquake
REUTERS/Kena Betancur, courtesy www.alertnet.org
Residents move a man injured during the earthquake that hit Port-au-Prince on January 12.
Dr. Greg Elder, MSF deputy operations manager for Haiti.
Dr. Greg Elder is the deputy operations manager for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Haiti. Here he provides an update on the situation on the ground in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 24 hours after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck the country leaving tens of thousands wounded and unknown number of dead.
Can you tell us what the situation is like…
more......
[Transcript] Teleconference on Emergency Response to Haiti Earthquake
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams already working on medical projects Haiti have treated hundreds of people injured in the quake and have been setting up clinics in tents to replace their own damaged medical facilities. Paul McPhun, MSF’s operations manager for Haiti, described the current situation for MSF teams on the ground during a press conference on January 13.
Download audio
"Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières—we have three general areas…
more......
MSF Activities in Haiti
Though its own facilities were severely damaged by the massive earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) field staff is establishing temporary clinics in order to treat injured men, women, and children. MSF was able to respond immediately because international and national staff had already been running several projects in country. These include:
Obstetric Care
Haiti 2007 © Julie Rémy
Pregnant women wait to see MSF staff at a mobile medical clinic in the La Saline area of Port-au-Prince.
In March 2006, in response to high levels of…
more......
Haiti: MSF Teams Set up Clinics to Treat Injured After Facilities Are Damaged
Haiti 2010 © MSF
People gather outside a damaged MSF office in Port-au-Prince to receive help after a 7-magnitude earthquake hit the capital city on January 12.
The first reports are now emerging from Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams who were already working on medical projects Haiti. They are treating hundreds of people injured in the quake and have been setting up clinics in tents to replace their own damaged medical facilities.
The Martissant health center in a poor area of Port-au-Prince had to be evacuated…
more......
MSF Responding to Devastating Earthquake in Haiti
On January 12, a magnitude 7.0 quake struck about 10 miles (15 kilometers) southwest of the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams on the ground have witnessed significant damage to its medical facilities, injuries to patients and staff, and an influx of wounded towards these hospitals in the capital.
MSF’s Trinite trauma center hospital, a 60-bed structure and one of the only free-of-charge surgical facilities in Port-au-Prince, was seriously damaged by the quake. Although difficult to confirm, hundreds are reported to be wounded while the Haitian capital is massively damaged.…
more......
Fleeing Violence in Western DRC, People Take Shelter in Republic of Congo
Republic of Congo 2009 © MSF
Civilians who have crossed the border from Equateur Province in western Democratic Republic of Congo take refuge in a public building in the Likouala area of the Republic of Congo in November 2009.
Approximately 100,000 people from Equateur Province, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), have crossed the border, fleeing extreme violence and the risk of its continuation. In the Republic of Congo, they do not have refugee status and their living conditions are precarious. Some have only limited access to aid. Laurent Sury, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans…
more......
[Press Release] Violence in Southern Italy Exposes Extreme Neglect and Exploitation of Seasonal Migrant Workers
Rome, January 12, 2010 - The recent violence in Calabria, Southern Italy, has placed the plight of the region’s seasonal migrant workers in the international spotlight. Following the outburst of violence against the migrant workers, sites where thousands of migrants have been living since November 2009, are now completely empty. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) denounces the ongoing neglect and exploitation of this vulnerable group.
Most migrants have been transferred by Italian authorities to centers for migrants in other parts of Southern Italy, and many have had to leave most of their belongings behind. …
more......
Burundi: MSF Emergency Center Flooded, Patients Evacuated
Heavy rains in the province of Bujumbura Rural in Burundi caused the Rusizi River to burst its banks, and flood the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Center for Obstetrical Emergencies in Kabezi (called CURGO), where 42 women and 10 newborns were hospitalized. To date, other houses in the proximity of the river have not been severely affected.
“It rained the whole night and the river spilled over again,” said Chantal Dheur, MSF's head of mission. “Hospital wards, the operation theatre, and the delivery room are completely flooded, with about 1.5 meters (about 5 feet) of mud…
more......
[Voice from the Field] DRC: MSF Works in 'Hunger Prison' in Bunia
DRC 2010 © Claude Mahoudeau/MSF
MSF staff in Bunia, from left, nurses Claude Wakungo and Serge Matata, and coordinator Manuel Ihang, stand inside the MSF medical tent situated outside of the Bunia prison where more than 500 detainees were in need of medical assistance.
Over a two-month period, 17 prisoners referred from the Bunia prison to the city’s hospital have died of severe malnutrition. The Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) team working in Bunia, located in the eastern district of Ituri, Democratic Republic of Congo, recently intervened to put an end to…
more......
Somalia: Despite Clashes, MSF Continues Activities in Galgadud Region
Somalia 2006 © Otavio Omati/MSF
MSF medical staff examine a child at a hospital in Guri El, Galgadud region.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) continues activities in Dhusa Mareb, despite growing insecurity due to clashes on Saturday, January 2.
In response to severe drought conditions, MSF started supplying water on December 23 in order to cover the needs of people in villages surrounding Dhusa Mareb and Guri El in the Galgadud region of Central Somalia.
The weekend clashes between different armed groups have made…
more......
[Special Report] Top Ten Humanitarian Crises of 2009
[Alert] Winter 2009
Gaza: "War wounds test a poorly equipped health system"
Palestinian Territories 2009 © Frederic Sautereau / Oeil Public
In the Gaza Strip, MSF doctors perform surgery on an 18-month-old with burns to her arm.
After last January's war, heightened medical and health needs prompted Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) to expand its activities to address shortfalls in specific areas, including post-operative care, physical therapy, mental health care and surgery. Jean-Luc Lambert, MSF's head of mission for the Palestinian Territories, assesses the activities of this post-war year and MSF's plans for the future.
How did MSF respond to post-war…
more......
[Special Report] Gaza: One Year After the War
Palestinian Territories 2009 © MSF
Gaza City remains in ruins nearly a year after the war, and likewise people's lives remain shattered.
Voice From the Field
Patients Are Still Deeply Affected A Year After the War
Field News
"War wounds test a poorly equipped health system"
Voice From the Field
"Eighty percent of my patients are children"
Field News
A Year After the War, Life…
more......
Gaza: A Year After the War, Life is More Difficult Than Ever
Palestinian Territories 2009 © MSF
A year after the Israeli military's Operation Cast Lead was launched on the Gaza Strip, homes and other buildings have yet to be rebuilt.
The Israeli military operation, Cast Lead, began on December 27, 2008. It involved intensive aerial bombing of the Gaza Strip and a land offensive launched on January 3, 2009. The operation was carried out to stop rocket fire into Israel and to prevent weapons from reaching Hamas, specifically by destroying tunnels dug under the Egyptian border. The Gaza War ended on January 18, 2009, after…
more......
Papua New Guinea: MSF Withdraws Staff Due to Security Incidents
On Dec. 15, 2009, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) announced its withdrawal of all international staff from a Tari, Papua New Guinea, hospital because of continued insecurity on hospital grounds. “In the past few weeks, there have been repeated security incidents including threats to our staff that we cannot tolerate,” said Monique Nagelkerke, head of mission for MSF in the country. “MSF staff must be safe to provide urgent lifesaving care and the authorities must do everything they can to ensure a safe working environment for all staff at the Tari Hospital.”
In the past few weeks, there have…
more......
[Voice from the Field] Gaza: Patients Are Still Deeply Affected A Year After the War
A year after the Israeli military's Operation Cast Lead was launched in the Gaza Strip, civilians are still deeply affected. Here are the stories of some of the patients Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has treated since the incursion.
Abd Alrahman,13-year old boy
Khan Yunis post-operative care clinic
© Isabelle Merny / MSF
“We were in the car with my father and my mother, when I saw a fireball. I woke up in an Egyptian hospital after spending four days in a coma. My father was killed. I found out later…
more......
[Voice from the Field] Gaza: "Eighty percent of my patients are children"
Palestinian Territories 2009 © MSF
A child in Gaza receives mental health care.
© MSF
Elina Pelekanou, MSF psychologist
A year after the war in the Gaza Strip, civilians continue to be deeply affected. Elina Pelekanou, a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) psychologist in Gaza, speaks about what she has seen.
"My first patient was a woman whose family was destroyed during the war. Fifty relatives died – they were at the wrong place at the wrong time. She had to walk, barefoot, over glass and…
more......
MSF Denounces Thai Government�s Forced Repatriation of Hmong Refugees to Laos
Thai authorities have begun expelling 4,000 Hmong remaining in the Huai Nam Khao camp in Thailand's Petchabun province back to Laos. No third-party organization is present at the site. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) which left the camps in May 2009 following military pressure, had denounced the forced repatriation policy.
The expulsion of the Hmong, who fled Laos to seek refuge in the Huai Nam Khao camp in Thailand, results from an agreement between the Laotian and Thai governments, signed in May 2007. The two had stated their intention to repatriate all Hmong to Laos…
more......
[Press Release] "Top Ten" Humanitarian Crises: Aid Blocked and Diseases Neglected
New York, December 21, 2009 — Civilians attacked, bombed, and cut off from aid in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), along with stagnant funding for treating HIV/AIDS and ongoing neglect of other diseases, were among the worst emergencies in 2009, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reported today in its annual list of the "Top Ten" humanitarian crises.
Continuing crises in north and south Sudan, along with the failure of the international community to finally combat childhood malnutrition were also included on this year’s list. The list…
more......
[Press Release] MSF Closes Programs in Turkmenistan after 10 Years
Berlin/Ashgabat, December 17, 2009 - The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has closed its medical activities in Turkmenistan after ten years of working in the Central Asian country.
“Medical needs in Turkmenistan are still high and there is a good reason for us to work here, said Frank Dörner, General Director at MSF. However, our project proposals have been repeatedly rejected which does not leave us with a lot of choice but to close down. We had hoped to be able to assist the Turkmen population which is exposed to high rates of multi-drug resistant…
more......
[Press Release] "Top Ten" Humanitarian Crises: Aid Blocked and Diseases Neglected
New York, December 21, 2009 — Civilians attacked, bombed, and cut off from aid in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), along with stagnant funding for treating HIV/AIDS and ongoing neglect of other diseases, were among the worst emergencies in 2009, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reported today in its annual list of the "Top Ten" humanitarian crises.
Continuing crises in north and south Sudan, along with the failure of the international community to finally combat childhood malnutrition were also included on this year’s list. The list…
more......
[Podcast] MSF Frontline Reports
Hear the song created by an MSF nurse in Central African Republic to raise awareness of sleeping sickness and malaria; MSF helps fight HIV/AIDS in South Africa's Khayelitsha township and addresses the double crises of HIV-TB co-infection in Swaziland.
more......
[Press Release] MSF Urges European Governments to Respect Life, Dignity and Healthcare of Migrants and Asylum Seekers
Brussels, December 16, 2009 - Asylum seekers and undocumented migrants are bearing the brunt of increasingly restrictive policies which take a toll on their physical and mental health. Escaping conflict, deprivation or widespread violations of human rights, they endure long and dangerous journeys to Europe. Yet when they finally reach Europe, many face prolonged detention, appalling living conditions and a lack of access to healthcare. Others remain trapped outside Europe or are intercepted and sent back to countries where their health and lives may be at risk. Ahead of International Migrants Day, the international humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans…
more......
[Press Release] Innovative Initiative Designed to Boost Access to Medicines is Adopted
Geneva, December 15, 2009 – In a decisive step to improve access to medicines in the developing world, the Executive Board of UNITAID, the international health financing agency, has given the green light for a patent pool for AIDS medicines to open for business.
A patent pool for medicines has the potential to safeguard access to patented medicines for people living with HIV in the developing world, by creating a structure for drug companies to share their HIV drug patents and receive royalties in return. Other drug companies can access these patents and competition between multiple manufacturers will bring prices…
more......
[Special Report] Southern Sudan: Facing Up to Reality
Sudan 2009 © Brendan Bannon
A group of displaced people arrive at a camp after fleeing their village when the Lord's Resistance Army rebel group attacked a neighboring settlement.
Special Report
Download Report [1.37 MB]
Video
Southern Sudan: Facing Up to Reality
Slideshow
Southern Sudan: Facing Up to Reality
In 2009, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) witnessed a worrying deterioration in the situation…
more......
[Video] Southern Sudan: Humanitarian and Security Situation Deteriorating
[Slideshow] Southern Sudan: Thousands Dead, Whole Communities Homeless
Northern Sri Lanka: MSF Medical Priorities
Sri Lanka 2009 © MSF
At the General Hospital of Vavuniya, MSF staff provide surgical care to people wounded during the war in northern Sri Lanka.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is still providing surgical and medical health care to the displaced people in Vavuniya district, northern Sri Lanka. Some war-wounded need specific medical care, like orthopedic surgery, and around 95,000 people remain in Manik Farm camp. Additional medical capacities could be needed in the areas of return, as a result of the resettlement process.
After the release of…
more......
[Press Release] Inadequate Aid as Violence Escalates in South Sudan Emergency
Special Report
Download Report [1.37 MB]
Video
Southern Sudan: Facing Up to Reality
Slideshow
Southern Sudan: Facing Up to Reality
Nairobi/New York, December 14 2009 - The people of Southern Sudan are trapped in a worsening crisis following the most violent year since the 2005 peace agreement that ended more than two decades of civil war with the North. However, the response to the escalating emergency is inadequate, said the…
more......
[Press Release] Pakistan: Hospitals in Acute Need of Support Following Displacement from Waziristan
Islamabad, December 10, 2009 - The massive influx of an estimated 300,000 people who fled fighting in South Waziristan is straining the capacity of hospitals in the Dera Ismael Khan district to meet the needs of displaced and resident populations. Despite the assistance provided by authorities, acute medical needs are not being met in D.I. Khan hospitals.
The private international medical organization, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), is ready to set up an emergency medical program to provide free treatment to patients for which it requesting authorization from Pakistani authorities.
Last week an MSF team was able carry out…
more......
Empty Hospital Beds in the Capital of Helmand, Afghanistan
MSF General Director Christopher Stokes
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has started to work again in Afghanistan after an absence of five years. MSF General Director Christopher Stokes, has extensive work experience in the country, and he has recently been back to take stock of the MSF projects.
In this article, he explains why it is crucial for MSF to base its activities in the country on three pillars: providing free medical care, not accepting funds from governments, and keeping all weapons out of the hospitals.
Afghanistan…
more......
Pakistan: Overview of MSF Projects
MSF in Pakistan
In Pakistan, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is providing medical assistance to a vulnerable population suffering the effects of political instability, poor access to adequate health care, and natural disasters. Having been present in the country since 1988, today MSF largely focus its activities in the northwest of the country where armed conflict is raging on both sides of the border and millions of displaced remain in need of medical care.
Pakistan suffers from some of the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the region. There is poor access to…
more......
Timurgara, Pakistan: "I have lost my house, my animals, my family, and my mind"
Pakistan 2009 © Jobi Bieber
A father sits with his child who is sick from cholera. Patients generally stay for three day at MSF's cholera treatment center in Timurgara, Lower Dir District, where they are rehydrated.
In Lower Dir district in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province several waves of displaced people have sought refuge since conflict erupted between armed opposition groups and the Pakistani army in August 2008. In the summer of 2009, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) helped set up camps for displaced people in Sumer Bagh, Sadbar Kalley and Munda,…
more......
Somalia: MSF Clinics Overflowing with Malnourished Children
Somalia 2009 © Jan Grarup /NOOR
A crowd of mothers and their children wait for consultations at one of MSF's nutrition centers in Galcayo.
The number of children under treatment for severe malnutrition has reached an all time high in Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)’s nutritional program in Galcayo, Somalia. More than 1,300 children are now under care in MSF nutritional projects in South Galcayo Hospital and North Galcayo Feeding Center. That is almost half the total number of children treated for malnutrition in the area in all of 2008.
Fatuma…
more......
Dargai, Pakistan: �I know how important my treatment is�
Pakistan 2009 © Jobi Bieber
An MSF surgeon attends to an appendectomy patient at the hospital in Dargai, Malakand District.
In the remote Malakand District in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province, the local population is trapped in the middle of a violent conflict between the Pakistani army and armed opposition groups. Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) provides support to the regional hospital in the town of Dargai, where a MSF medical team assists in the emergency room, operating theatre and inpatient department.
It has been a busy morning in the emergency room of…
more......
Kuchlak, Pakistan: Where Childbirth is a Deadly Part of Life
Pakistan 2009 © Jobi Bieber
A newborn and mother rest at MSF's maternal health center in Balochistan Province.
Kuchlak is a city of 120,000 people located a 30-minutes drive from Quetta, the capital of Balochistan Province. Situated on the border with Afghanistan, the town has become a permanent home to Afghan refugees who fled to Pakistan during the civil war in the 1980s and later conflicts. In this remote area where health services are almost unreachable, Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has been providing medical care in a maternal health and a…
more......
Mardan, Pakistan: "We all have this disease in the village, especially the children"
Pakistan 2009 © Jobi Bieber
Maaz Amankhel, 14 months old, is receiving an intravenous drip with a rehydrating solution as part of ther treatment in MSF's cholera treatment unit in Nowshera, near Mardan in northwestern Pakistan.
When around one million people fled fighting in Swat Valley and Buner District in May 2009, many sought refuge in Mardan, a district in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province. In this remote area of Pakistan, Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) is helping local health clinics and hospitals to cope with the massive influx of people and…
more......
Somalia: MSF Laments Attack on Medical Students' Graduation
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is deeply saddened by the recent attack during the graduation of medical students from Benadir University. Medical needs throughout Somalia are vast, and in many places made all the worse by high levels of violence and prolonged drought. In contrast, the provision of medical care is vastly insufficient and many people throughout the country suffer unnecessarily as a result of the lack of healthcare.
The medical graduates of Benadir University offer a rare hope for the Somali people—the possibility of lifesaving medical care. Medical staff provides assistance based on medical need…
more......
[Podcast] MSF Frontline Reports
Hear how a new proposal for free health care could save lives in Sierra Leone if it is implemented; and from Bangladesh, our operations manager describes how MSF is assisting tens of thousands of Rohingya people struggling to survive; plus, hear this month's MSF Emergency Updates.
more......
Condition: Critical - Voices from the war in Eastern Congo
[Video] DRC: Condition:Critical - Bahati's Story
Brazil: MSF Ends Emergency Program in Rio Favelas
Brazil 2009 © David Prichard
Since 2007, MSF has been providing emergency care and mental health support to the population trapped by violence in Complexo do Alemão, a slum area of Rio de Janeiro controlled by armed drug gangs.
After two years, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is concluding its emergency intervention in one of Rio de Janeiro’s slums. MSF teams have treated thousands for the effects of the violence and hardship that persist in the capital’s favelas.
A group of slums, or favelas, home to more than 170,000 people, Complexo do…
more......
Republic of Congo: MSF Assists People Fleeing Violence in DRC
Democratic Republic of Congo 2009 © MSF
Renewed conflict in northerwestern DRC has so far caused 34,000 refugees to flee to neighboring Republic of Congo in search of safety.
A recent upsurge of violence, sparked by inter-community conflicts in Equateur Province in the northwest of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), has forced 74,000 people to flee their homes. Many have headed for the country’s interior, while others have taken refuge across the border, in the Republic of the Congo, where their health remains in peril.
A massive torrent of people are fleeing Equateur…
more......
[Video] World AIDS Day 2009
What HIV/AIDS Looks Like Today in South Africa
In the streets of Khayelitsha, a sprawling township mired in poverty on the outskirts of Cape Town, there is a saying, “Living with HIV, dying from TB”. It sums up life in this place, where nearly one in three is HIV-positive and HIV-related infections are the leading cause of death. A staggering 5.5 million people live with HIV/AIDS in South Africa—more than any other country in the world. Despite having the world’s highest number of people receiving antiretroviral (ARV) therapy, about 850,000, there are millions more who cannot access the…
more......
HIV/AIDS: Global Fund Board Commits to New Funding Round
The Board of Directors of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria recently voted to authorize a new call for proposals in 2010, the success of which will ultimately depend on whether donors commit to fully funding the Global Fund. Without adequate funding, the progress and pace of scale-up of lifesaving HIV/AIDS treatment, particularly antiretroviral therapy (ART), supported by the Global Fund will be threatened.
"We are pleased that the Global Fund remains open for business in 2010. Now donors must provide funding given that the Global Fund is the best chance for many countries to scale-up HIV/AIDS,…
more......
[Video] DRC: Condition:Critical - Mishoka's Story
[Audio Slideshow] Zimbabwe: "Seeing 500 patients a day is a bit crazy"
Philippines: MSF Temporarily Suspends Activities After Killings
Following the killings of 46 people on the island of Mindanao on Monday, November 23, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams in the Philippines temporarily suspended their activities as the organization’s local contacts said the situation was currently too tense in the area to travel by road.
These killings occurred in an area where MSF has been providing support via mobile clinics to victims of the ongoing conflict between rebels and government troops since October 2008. The Cotabato-based MSF team is preparing emergency intervention kits should the latest event lead to further violence.
more......
DRC: More Than 165,000 Children Vaccinated Against Measles in Masisi, North Kivu
DRC 2009 © Clementine Lacroix /MSF
MSF staff vaccinates a child in Miandja district, North Kivu.
An epidemic of measles is currently raging in the Miandgja, Ngomashi, and Lwibo districts in the Masisi region of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. There are hundreds of thousands of children living in these areas who have not been immunized against measles. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has therefore launched a large-scale emergency vaccination campaign and has also treated 130 children who have contracted measles.
More than 1,036 cases of children with measles…
more......
Republic of Congo: Influx of DRC Refugees in Dire Need of Assistance
Approximately 24,000 refugees recently arrived in northern Republic of Congo. They are fleeing serious violence related to conflict in areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is the only organization providing assistance and people are in critical need of food and relief materials from other aid organizations.
"There is no assistance for the refugees – no food, no water, no shelter," says Dr. Salha Issoufou, MSF's emergency coordinator. "The families are scattered along the river, outside."
MSF has begun offering medical care to refugees in Inpfoudou…
more......
[Voice from the Field] Zimbabwe: "The prison population is usually last on society�s priority list"
Zimbabwe 2009 © MSF
Pip Millard, MSF project coordinator in Zimbabwe
During the response to Zimbabwe’s cholera epidemic earlier this year, medical teams from Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) started to work in prisons across the country to treat cholera patients and prevent the spread of the deadly disease. As the four-month intervention is concluding, MSF’s project coordinator in Zimbabwe, Pip Millard, gives insight into the challenge of curbing an outbreak in penitentiaries.
Why did MSF start working in Zimbabwe’s prisons?
During our cholera intervention earlier in the year, we…
more......
[Video] DRC: Condition: Critical - Francoise's Story
Kyrgyzstan: MSF Treats Prisoners Struggling with Drug-Resistant TB
Kyrgyzstan 2009 © Alexander Glyadyelov
In Kyrgyzstan, a team of MSF community workers and a network of volunteers assist former prisoners with tuberculosis to complete their treatment regimes for the deadly disease.
Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is on the rise worldwide and kills around 120,000 each year. The treatment of MDR-TB is very time-consuming and has prohibitively negative side effects. Many patients have difficulties remaining in treatment for up to two years and must at the same time endure the social stigma that comes with being infected by the deadly disease.
He is…
more......
[Voice from the Field] Central African Republic: Singing About Sleeping Sickness
Central African Republic 2009 © Raghu Venugopal/MSF
MSF nurse Katherine Sisterman teachs children in Maitikoulou a song about sleeping sickness in their native language, Mbai.
Listen to the song about sleeping sickness:
With help from a patient and national staff, Katherine Sisterman, a U.S. nurse on her first assignment with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in northern Central African Republic (CAR) developed a song to teach people about human African trypanosomiasis, also called sleeping sickness or trypano. Here, she describes how the song came to be.
Greetings from Maitikoulou,…
more......
[Video] Sierra Leone: Patient Fees Put Lifesaving Medical Care Out of Reach
Sierra Leone: Lives Are Lost Due to Costly Healthcare
Sierra Leone 2008 © William Daniels
All patients must pay user fees to access medical care in Sierra Leone, even though half the population lives on less than a dollar a day.
Lives that could be saved are lost every day in Sierra Leone, where user fees serve as a major obstacle to accessing vital health care. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) urges international donors and others at a conference this week in London to take the necessary steps to improve access to health care in this desperately poor country. …
more......
[Slideshow] Kyrgyzstan: Former Prisoners Struggle to Continue TB Treatment
[Press Release] Fears For Migrants Forced Back to Africa
Rome, November 19, 2009 -- New Italian government policies to curb the influx of migrants have led to a sharp decrease in the number of migrants and refugees arriving by boat to Lampedusa, Italy. As a result, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is withdrawing its team from the island. Between May and October 2008, more than 21,000 migrants and refugees landed on Lampedusa after a perilous journey across the Mediterranean, according to MSF. During the same period this year, MSF teams saw fewer than 200 migrants. MSF is extremely concerned for the fate of…
more......
World Food Summit Fails to Address Childhood Malnutrition
As the World Food Summit draws to a close, the international community once again provides no commitments on tackling childhood malnutrition. World leaders have also failed to commit funds to directly target the malnutrition problem, despite pledges of US $20 billion to support food security made at the l’Aquila G8 meeting earlier this year.
The neglect of 3.5 to 5 million children under the age of five who die from malnutrition each year means that the summit has conspicuously failed to protect those most in need.
In 2008, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières…
more......
El Salvador: MSF Responds in Wake of Devastating Floods
El Salvador 2009 © Xavi Punset /MSF
Floods and mudslides have taken the lives of 150 people in El Salvador. MSF teams are based in the region of La Paz, concentrating on the distribution of non-food items and giving mental health support to the victims.
During the weekend of November 6-9, a fierce storm struck El Salvador, triggering floods and mudslides that killed 150 people and displaced more than 13,000. The storm, which is unnamed, came only few days after Hurricane Ida churned along the Atlantic coast of Central America. Salvadorian authorities have…
more......
[Voice from the Field] Malawi: "How can you go back to rationing access to care?"
Malawi 2009 © MSF
Olesi Ellemani Pasulani, MSF clinical officer in Malawi, remembers what is was like treating people living with HIV/AIDS before the scale-up of ART in Malawi. "You could just take care of them, and wait for the day that they would die," he said.
The increase in availability of antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) used to treat HIV in recent years, backed by solid funding commitments, has given millions of people in poor countries a new lease on life. This is the case for tens of thousands of people living with HIV/AIDS in…
more......
[Voice from the Field] Somalia: "I did not choose this career at the beginning"
Somalia 2009 © MSF
In the South Galcayo hospital, 144 Somali MSF staff are working to keep surgical activities running in an insecure area where violent clashes occurs often.
In the central Somali city of Galkayo, Dr. Abdullahi Adan Mohamoud is working for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) to provide health care to a vulnerable population trapped in a conflict-ridden and divided city. In this interview, he discusses the medical needs in Galkayo and his experience working as a surgeon in Somalia.
Why is MSF’s surgical facility in South Galkayo Hospital…
more......
Somalia: Round-the-Clock Care Saves Countless Lives in South Galkayo Hospital
Somalia 2009 © MSF
Despite the forced evacuation of international staff in early 2008, MSF services in the war-torn city of Galkayo has continued, thanks to hard work by the Somali medical staff.
Located in bone-dry central Somalia, the city of Galkayo is divided in half by warring militias and separatist regional governments that continuously clash in armed confrontations. Since Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) was forced to evacuate its international staff in 2008 due to insecurity, MSF’s Somali staff has carried on the work of providing medical care to people trapped…
more......
[Press Release] Efforts to Combat Global Childhood Malnutrition Woefully Underfunded
Rome/New York, November 11, 2009 – Funding by rich countries to combat malnutrition has remained flat for seven years, according to a report released today by the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). This barely accounts for three percent of the funds needed to reduce the 3.5 to 5 million annual deaths of children under five attributed to malnutrition.
The report also reveals the enormous waste built into the food aid system. According to MSF, much of the nutrition funding gap could be filled by re-allocating existing funds towards the most vulnerable group, children under…
more......
[Special Report] Malnutrition: How Much is Being Spent?
Democratic Republic of Congo 2009 © Kate Geraghty
Malnutrition is one of the biggest contributors to child mortality. Here, an MSF worker screens a Congolese child for malnutrition with a MUAC, a tool that measures his middle-upper arm circumference.
Download full report
Malnutrition is an urgent humanitarian emergency that contributes to the deaths of 3.5 to 5 million children under five each year. Millions more are left vulnerable to illnesses or suffering from physical or mental disabilities due to malnutrition.…
more......
Southern Africa: Fighting HIV-TB Crisis, MSF Contributes to New Recommendations
Participants at an International Consultative Workshop that took place at the end of October in Swaziland have come up with a series of recommendations to improve and increase the response to the alarming dual epidemic of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis (TB) that is claiming thousands of lives every year in the Southern African region and in Swaziland in particular. The meeting was jointly organized by the Ministry of Health of the Kingdom of Swaziland and Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
From October 28 to 30, 2009, over 120 international and local experts gathered in Matsapha, Swaziland, to…
more......
Cape Verde: MSF Responds to Africa's Biggest Recorded Dengue Fever Outbreak
The Cape Verde Ministry of Health has reported 13,187 suspected cases of dengue hemorrhagic fever in four islands within the archipelago between October 1 and November 9. The outbreak is the first ever in Cape Verde and is the biggest recorded in Africa. The number of cases increased sharply at the beginning of November, reaching 1,000 cases per day. As of November 11, 93 cases of dengue fever have been reported and six people have died.
“This is the first reported epidemic of dengue fever in Cape Verde and it is huge,” said Dr. Iza Ciglenecki, MSF’s emergency coordinator in…
more......
Greece: Detention Center Temporarily Closed
Greece 2008 © Giorgos Moutafis
The Pagani detention center on the island of Levbos will be temporarily shut down for repairs. The closing has raised anticipation of a potential change in Greek immigration policy.
The Greek government has announced they will temporary close down the Pagani detention center. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) sees this as a welcome first step towards more humane treatment of undocumented migrants and asylum seekers.
In order to carry out repairs, Greek authorities have decided to temporarily close the Pagani detention center, which is located in Lesvos,…
more......
Lebanon: Breaking the Mental Health Taboo
Lebanon 2009 © MSF
Farah Malyani, MSF mental health worker
After the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) was alerted to the gap in the provision of mental health care in Lebanon. After conducting an assessment, MSF launched a mental health project on the outskirts of Beirut in December 2008 to provide care to communities that generally consider mental health a private matter with a heavy social stigma.
MSF's community mental health center is located near a large Palestinian refugee camp in Burj El Barajneh, in southern Beirut, and…
more......
CAR: MSF Sees More Than 4,000 Children in Nutrition Emergency
The southwestern area of Central African Republic (CAR) continues to face a severe nutritional emergency. In September, after being alerted by local authorities, MSF medical teams opened four feeding centers in Carnot, Boda, Nola, and Gamboula. Teams also implemented a number of outpatient treatment programs. Three months later, staff have treated more than 4,000 children. Clara Delacre, MSF emergency coordinator in Boda and Nola, explains the situation on the ground.
How has the situation evolved over the last three months?
In Boda, the number of patients has been increasing progressively…so much so that 1,600…
more......
Sudan: MSF Responds to Violence and Displacements in Shangil Tobaya, Darfur
Violent clashes over water sources near Shangil Tobaya, a town in North Darfur, Sudan, have caused a number of casualties and the displacement of more than 3,000 people. Since October 20, Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has provided medical care to 12 wounded people and referred nine to the Al-Fashir Teaching Hospital. All nine patients are in stable condition.
MSF has also distributed relief items to about 3,300 affected people who have sought refuge in the towns of Um Dressaya and Shangil Tobaya. However, additional distributions of relief items is necessary due to new arrivals.
"Some people had to…
more......
Philippines: Second Typhoon in a Month Makes Landfall
Philippines 2009 © Tony Marchant /MSF
Over the last 40 days, the Philippines has been hit by two violent typhoons and a tropical storm, which have all caused severe flooding and prompted people to assemble in evacuation centers like this one in Santa Cruz.
Typhoon Mirinae hit the east coast of Quezon province in the Philippines on October 30, packing winds of 93 mph with gusts of up to 115 mph. Mirinae, also called Santi, brought heavy rain and floods to the area before weakening into a tropical storm and veering towards Vietnam.…
more......
[Audio Slideshow] DRC: Renewed Violence in Baraka, South Kivu
Southern Sudan: MSF Responds to Kala Azar Outbreak
Sudan 2007 © Susan Sandars/MSF
MSF teams walk to health posts to provide medical care in Jonglei State. During the rainy season, which continues through the Fall, reaching many of these sites requires wading through water or using boats.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is responding to outbreaks of kala azar—a severe parasitic disease—in Southern Sudan. The emergency is in several locations across the eastern part of the region and MSF is treating patients in its clinics in Pibor and Lankien, both in Jonglei State, and using mobile teams in Rom, in Upper…
more......
[Press Release] DR Congo: MSF Vaccination Used as Bait in Unacceptable Attack on Civilians
Kinshasa, November 6, 2009 – Last month, seven vaccination sites operated by the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) came under fire during attacks by the Congolese army against the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR) in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Thousands of civilians had gathered at the sites. MSF denounces this clearly unacceptable abuse of humanitarian aid for military purposes.
MSF launched a mass vaccination campaign in Masisi district to support the Congolese ministry of health in its response to a measles epidemic. On October 17, MSF medical teams were vaccinating…
more......
Indonesia: One Month After Earthquake, Focus is on Mental Health
Indonesia 2009 © Alan Cheung /MSF
Nearly one month after the earthquake, MSF is focusing on providing mental health training and conducting epidemiological surveillance of communicable diseases, including measles and tetanus, in villages near Padang and Pariaman.
Slideshow
Indonesia: One Month After the Earthquake
On September 30, a massive earthquake hit the Indonesian island of Sumatra, causing widespread destruction and triggering landslides that wiped out entire villages. According to the United Nations, an estimated 2.5 million people have been affected by the 7.6 magnitude quake,…
more......
[Special Report] HIV/AIDS: Punishing Success?
South Africa 2003 © Mariella Furrer
HIV/AIDS activists send a message in Lusikiki. The tremendous progress made in treating HIV patients in developing countries, including South Africa, is being threatened by a lack of funding and political will.
Special Report
Download Report [713 KB]
Over the past decade, enormous resources have been mobilized globally to address the HIV/AIDS crisis on a large scale. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has seen first-hand the achievements, as well as some of the…
more......
[Press Release] Punishing Success in Tackling AIDS
Special Report
Download Report [713 KB]
Johannesburg/New York, November 5, 2009 — A retreat from international funding commitments for AIDS threatens to undermine the dramatic gains made in reducing AIDS-related illness and death in recent years, according to a new report released today by the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
International support to combat HIV/AIDS is faltering, as reflected in significant shortfalls among two of the world’s main funding mechanisms for HIV/AIDS. The board of directors of the Global Fund, a key…
more......
[Voice from the Field] Indonesia: "Most of the people are still afraid of another earthquake"
Indonesia 2009 © Alan Cheung / MSF
Daisy Plana, a Philippine mental health officer working for MSF, is providing mental health care in the rural areas surrounding the city of Pariaman.
Slideshow
Indonesia: One Month After the Earthquake
Patient stories
Millions were affected by the earthquake that hit Sumatra on September 30 as massive landslides burried entire villages. Here is some of the stories told by MSF patients:
“I was very upset, because I lost everything, my house and my family members.”
- Zaidir,…
more......
[Slideshow] Indonesia: One Month After the Earthquake
[Podcast] MSF Frontline Reports
This month we bring you a story about malnutrition in a land rich for cultivation: in the Democratic Republic of Congo, many children suffer from severe malnutrition even though food is abundant where they live. And in Uganda, a community-based movement of HIV-positive patients helps MSF provide care. Plus, this month's Emergency Updates.
more......
[Video] Southern Asia and the South Pacific
[Video] DRC: Violence Continues Against Civilians
[Video] Central African Republic: Nutritional Emergency in the Southwest
[Video] Papua New Guinea: Cholera Epidemic
[Video] Iraq: MSF Authorized to Continue Its Activities
[Voice from the Field] DRC: "Since we left, at least 1,000 have died of sleeping sickness "
Before being forced to leave in March 2009, Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) operated several sleeping sickness projects in the northern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The last site to be evacuated was in the small town of Bili in Bas Uélé Province. Bili is a small town with approximately 7,000 residents, thinly spread across a forested region. The town has no electricity and no running water. There is an old cotton factory that has been closed for more than 15 years. Neither the police nor the military are present. In this interview, Sophie Signoret, the last MSF doctor…
more......
DRC: Conflict Leaves Population Vulnerable to Sleeping Sickness
DRC 2008 © Claude Mahoudeau/MSF
MSF staff visited sleeping sickness patients in Banda in 2008 to give them their injections.
Half a year after Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) were forced to abandon its project in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) due to the security situation, it is still not safe to return. Meanwhile, infection levels of sleeping sickness, which was a main focus of MSF’s activities in the area, are on the rise and many vulnerable people are at risk to the fatal disease.
In Fall of 2008, the…
more......
[Press Release] Improved Treatment for Sleeping Sickness Now Available
Geneva/Kampala, September 22, 2009 - NECT (Nifurtimox-Eflornithine Combination Therapy), the first new treatment in 25 years against Human African trypanosomiasis (HAT) or sleeping sickness, is now available. Endemic countries have now begun the process of ordering the new combination treatment and kits through the World Health Organization (WHO). Developed by DNDi and its partners, NECT cuts the cost of treatment by half and significantly reduces the burden on health workers. The announcement was made today at the International Scientific Council for Trypanosomiasi Research and Control (ISCTRC), in Kampala, Uganda.
“Thanks to an innovative partnership and the hard work of health…
more......
Colombia: MSF Provides Care to New Wave of Displaced People in Southwest
Colombia 2009 © Clement Saccomani
MSF is providing medical care to people displaced by recent escalations of the armed conflict in southwestern Colombia.
Armed conflict is intensifying across the Nariño Department, in the southwest of the country, where various armed groups are fighting for the land due to its strategic relevance, the presence of coca crops and economic interest. As a result of the fighting, 12,400 people have been displaced in Nariño in 2009 alone, according to official figures. Mostly, these people receive little or no care during the first days following their…
more......
[Voice from the Field] Patient Story: In Swaziland, �People are scared of me�
Nikiwe, 30 years old, was diagnosed in early 2009 with drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB). Here, he talks about the daily struggle of being infected and the shame he feels living with his illness in a fearful community.
"My name is Nikiwe Mahlaba. I’m 30 years old and I live in Thunzini in Shiselweni region in the Kingdom of Swaziland. I am a single parent with two children and I live in a one bedroom house with the rest of my family. We are six altogether, including my two brothers and my mother. She is the breadwinner and the pension she receives…
more......
[Video] HIV-TB: A Double Epidemic in Southern Africa
[Video] NECT: An Improved Therapy for Sleeping Sickness
Sleeping sickness is a major health problem in sub-Saharan Africa. With existing medicines either cumbersome to administer or a cause of intense side effects, a new and cheaper therapy, NECT, holds great promise of benefiting thousands of vulnerable patients.
more......
[Special Report] HIV-TB in Swaziland: A Deadly Co-Infection Epidemic
Swaziland 2007 © Alexander Glyadyelov
An MSF medical staff looks at a patient's X-ray at a HIV-TB treatment center in Shiselweni region.
Related
Field News
Swaziland: An MSF Doctors Explains HIV-TB Co-Infection
An interview with MSF doctor Hermann Reuter
Video
HIV-TB: A Double Epidemic in Southern Africa
Patient Stories
Patient Story: “This painful treatment is my only way out of drug-resistant TB”
Patient Story: In Swaziland, “People are scared of…
more......
Swaziland: An MSF Doctors Explains HIV-TB Co-Infection
Swaziland 2007 © Alexander Glyadyelov
MSF medical staff examines a patient at an HIV- TB treatment center in Shiselweni region.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) doctor Hermann Reuter works in a tuberculosis (TB) project in a rural district of Swaziland called Shiselweni. MSF is present in 17 clinics and three health centers here and Dr. Reuter rotates between the health centers, where most of TB patients are managed. Here, he explains the situation on the ground.
What do you see at the health centers?
On a daily basis, nurses manage the TB patients…
more......
[Voice from the Field] Patient Story: �This painful treatment is my only way out of drug-resistant TB�
Swaziland 2009 © MSF
Nonkululeko Mamba
Nonkululeko Mamba, 25, sits listening quietly to one of the speakers attending the International Consultative Workshop convened by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the Ministry of Health of Swaziland. She sits among the group of international health experts who have come to discuss the situation she and hundreds of thousands of people find themselves in. Her friend approachs me and says that Nonkululeko wants to share her story. When I scan the crowd to find her, I see this stunning woman in a bright yellow…
more......
[Special Report] DRC: Despite Breakthrough Treatment, Sleeping Sickness Flourishes Due to Violence
Democratic Republic of Congo 2008 © Claude Mahoudeau/MSF
In 2007, MSF opened a sleeping sickness project in the northeastern province of Haut-Uélé in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Due to insecurity, the project was suspended in March 2009.
VIDEO
NECT: An Improved Treatment for Sleeping Sickness
PRESS RELEASE
Improved Treatment for Sleeping Sickness Now Available
RELATED NEWS
Conflict Leaves Population Vulnerable to Sleeping Sickness
VOICE FROM THE FIELD
"Since we left, at least 1,000 have…
more......
Philippines: Displaced People Vulnerable to Disease After Storms
In Manila and in the North of the Philippines, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams continue to assist the most vulnerable people affected by Tropical Storm Ketsana and Typhoon Parma, which struck the country on September 26 and October 3, affecting more than 8.4 million and causing 849 deaths.
In Manila and surrounding areas, tens of thousands of people are living in crowded evacuation centers or partially flooded houses. In the slums near a canal east of Manila and in all affected areas of Laguna Bay, MSF has been running mobile primary health care clinics…
more......
Greece: Migrants� Living Conditions in Lesvos Detention Center Spark Discontent
Greece 2009 © MSF
Migrants and undocumented workers live in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions at Pagani detention center in Lesvos.
It has been more than two months since Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) resumed providing psychosocial support to undocumented migrants and asylum seekers in the Pagani detention center on the island of Lesvos, and the situation continues to be extremely worrying.
Poor living conditions, constant distress, and uncertainty for the future are a living reality for the people detained in the center. As a result, more and more often during the last…
more......
Indonesia: �The emergency phase is mostly over; now we enter recovery�
Indonesia 2009 © Juan-Carlos Tomasi
An MSF psychologist speaks with an earthquake survivor near Padang Alai on the island of Sumatra.
Video
Indonesia: MSF's Post-Earthquake Intervention Continues
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) responded immediately to an earthquake that struck the Indonesian island of Sumatra on September 30. Loreto Barceló, coordinator of the MSF emergency teams there, talks about how the situation is evolving on the ground nearly three weeks later.
What is the situation like on the ground today?
more......
[Video] Indonesia: MSF's Post-Earthquake Intervention Continues
Nearly three weeks after the earthquake hit, the emergency phase is winding down, but MSF is still finding small populations in need of help and continues to provide medical and mental health assistance, as well as relief supplies.
more......
Philippines: MSF Continues Assistance During Slow Recovery
Rosales, The Philippines 2009 © MSF / Veronique Terrasse
MSF is distributing relief items in the city of Rosales, which was recently flooded when authorities were forced to release water from nearby dams to prevent their collapse.
Patient Stories
Weeks after severe storms hit the Philippines, many people are still reeling from damage caused by subsequent floods. In Pangasinan and Tarlac provinces, areas were devastated after authorities were forced to release water from local dams in danger of spilling over. Some MSF patients shared their stories:
“We grabbed our four children…
more......
Chechnya: MSF Hands Over TB Dispensaries
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is starting the process of gradually handing over its tuberculosis (TB) program in Chechnya. Gudermes district TB dispensary is the first of five TB facilities covered by the program to be handed over to the Ministry of Health.
MSF’s TB activities in Chechnya have been in place for more than five years and have supported over 3,000 patients. The program covers the entire republic, providing support to five district TB dispensaries in Chechnya: Gudermes, Nadterechny, Shali, Shelkovskoy, and Grozny.
Although MSF teams did not treat TB patients directly, they supported…
more......
[Press Release] European Countries Dramatically Underfunding TB Research
Special Report
View Document
Stockholm, October 21, 2009 – The largest European countries are lagging far behind the United States in funding of tuberculosis (TB) research and development. As such they bear a responsibility for the painfully slow progress in finding new TB tests and treatments, according to a report released today by the medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). The report shows that all European countries in the analysis—with the exception of Sweden-- have failed to prioritize TB and are contributing to huge global underfunding…
more......
[Video] Philippines: MSF Intervenes After Flooding
As the water begins to recede and the roads are cleared, people are starting to pick up their lives. But many find themselves destitute and the extent of the damage remains huge.
more......
[Press Release] Yemen: Razeh Hospital Hit by Rocket Fire
Sanaa/Paris, October 20, 2009 — Two months into the war in Northern Yemen, one of the last functioning hospitals in the Saada governorate was directly hit by rocket fire last week and forced to close. It is urgent that a hospital be set up in a safe area allowing patients to access health care, said the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) on Tuesday. MSF is ready to restart medical activities in the governorate as soon as possible.
The night between Thursday, October 15 and Friday October 16, Razeh hospital, in the Saada governorate, was hit…
more......
[Alert] Fall 2009
[Video] MSF Activities at Somalia's Jamaame Hospital
Located nearly 20 miles north of the Somali city of Kismayo, Jamaame Hospital was opened in 2007. At this site, MSF provides nutrition, maternity, general medical, and emergency care. Javier Roldan, a 35 year-old nurse worked as Jamaame field coordinator for seven months this year. Here he recounts his experience.
more......
India: Flood Water Recedes But Humanitarian Needs Remain
Flood water in the Indian states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh is receding, yet millions are still left homeless. Concerns are growing about the needs for shelter, food, and protection against diseases such as malaria. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) was one of the first international humanitarian aid organizations to provide emergency assistance to the affected populations in Andhra Pradesh, and is continuing its relief efforts.
Simon Burroughs, MSF’s Emergency Coordinator in Andhra Pradesh, reports: "When I look around in the village where I am standing, virtually every building has been destroyed. This place was hit…
more......
Philippines: MSF Provides Emergency Assistance to Newly Flooded Area
Philippines 2009 © Chris Lockyear/MSF
MSF is distributing relief items to victims of new floods, which recently hit remote communities of Northern Luzon.
Torrential and prolonged rains continue to flood new areas of the main Philippine island, Luzon. Mobile teams from Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) are providing medical care and relief items to the most vulnerable people in the remote and inaccessible areas where many have yet to receive any help.
On October 8, landslides in the northern province of Benguet caused about 180 deaths. The same…
more......
[Slideshow] DRC: Three Child Survivors of Abduction
In Faradje, Haut-Uélé region, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) opened a project in 2009 for children who were abducted by armed groups. In the first five months, MSF staff assisted 114 children. Here are three of them.
more......
DRC: MSF Providing Care to Victims of Violence
View larger map
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is currently working in northern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), providing more than 9,000 medical consultations a month in hospitals and health centers. MSF has also distributed relief items to some 16,000 people displaced by violence, as well as vaccinations and mental health support. In total, 27 international staff work alongside 140 Congolese colleagues in MSF projects in Haut-Uélé and Bas-Uélé.
Dungu
National staff: 80
International staff: 7
From June to September, MSF conducted 2,800 outpatient consultations in two health centers in Namboli and Lipay, in the…
more......
[Press Release] Violence Expands in Northern Congo, Population in Urgent Need of Assistance
Kinshasa, DRC, October 14, 2009 – One year after violence erupted in Haut-Uélé district, in northern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), attacks and clashes have now expanded to new areas, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee. Humanitarian organizations have failed to meet the massive needs that have resulted and an urgent response with greater presence in the rural areas of Haut-Uélé and Bas-Uélé is imperative, said the international humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
Since late 2008, the civilian population of Haut-Uélé and Bas-Uélé has been caught in a dramatic cycle of violence linked to attacks…
more......
Nigeria: MSF Treats Victims Wounded in Fighting at Port Harcourt Waterfront
On Monday, October 12, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams received patients reportedly injured in a demonstration against the demolition of the Bundu-Ama waterfront area in Port Harcourt.
MSF medical teams have so far treated nine casualties from Bundu-Ama in Teme Hospital, located in the heart of the city. All of the injuries were the result of gunshot wounds. People suffered abdominal and chest wounds, as well as bone fractures. Two patients required immediate surgical care.
“As a medical facility, our main priority is to treat patients," said Barbara Frederick, field coordinator for…
more......
[Video] DRC: More Assistance Needed Due to Violence in the Northeast
Since late 2008, the civilian population of Haut-Uélé and Bas-Uélé has been caught in a dramatic cycle of violence. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced and violent attacks continue to send thousands seeking shelter and greater security in towns.
more......
Yemen: MSF Faces Daily Challenges in North
Yemen 2009 © Arnaud Drouart / MSF
An MSF vehicle parks outside an MSF facility in Al Tahl.
In the north of Yemen intense fighting has been ongoing for the past eight weeks. Since September 2007, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has worked in Saada governorate in northern Yemen. MSF staff currently provide medical care to the population affected by the 'Sixth War', the most recent of a series of violent outbreaks that began in 2004 between government forces and members of the opposition group Al Houthi. Andrés Romero, MSF’s head of mission…
more......
Philippines: MSF Teams Assess Flooded Areas as Typhoon Loops Back
Philippines 2009 © Reuters
Residents wait for relief supplies in a muddy street in Rizal, west of Manila.
What is in an MSF hygiene kit?
Kits can include the following, depending on local need:
Bucket
Cooking Pot
Saucepans
Cutlery
Plates
Cups
Toothpaste and toothbrush
Soap
Dishwashing Liquid
Washing powder for clothes
Blankets
Towel
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams are currently assessing the situation on the main island of Luzon, as Typhoon Parma continues to rain on the northern Philippines. Authorities fear new landslides and…
more......
Afghanistan: No Guns No Fees in Kabul's Ahmed Shah Baba Hospital
Afghanistan 2009 © Erwin Vantland /MSF
Ahmed Shah Baba hospital, in eastern Kabul
By 11:30am most patients in Ahmed Shah Baba hospital, in eastern Kabul, have been seen. They arrive early in the morning, receive their consultations and treatment, and return home before the hottest part of the day begins. Just before the staff take their lunch break, there is one patient left in the emergency room, and two pregnant women in the maternity ward. Only the vaccination room and its waiting area are still bustling with women in bright blue burkas and their…
more......
Indonesia: MSF Assists Neglected Areas in Aftermath of Earthquake
Just 10 days after an earthquake struck Sumatra Island, a large amount of aid is already coming in. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is therefore focusing efforts on the most neglected areas. Some heavily affected villages are still very difficult to access and others that are farther away from the epicenter have received little assistance. MSF teams have started to run mobile clinics in those areas and are providing mental health support to the survivors. They have also initiated the distribution of relief items and are setting up water distribution points.
“A massive amount of aid…
more......
Afghanistan: MSF Returns After Five Years
Afghanistan 2009 © Erwin Vantland /MSF
A father and son wait in the emergency ward at Ahmed Shah Baba hospital in eastern Kabul.
After leaving Afghanistan five years ago, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has started working again in the country's capital, Kabul. The organization’s return this year was motivated by indications that the overall situation for Afghans was getting worse rather than better. Insecurity in Afghanistan has increased, and access to health services is problematic for many Afghans.
MSF is currently working in eastern Kabul in Ahmed Shah Baba…
more......
[Voice from the Field] Indonesia: �People are still waiting for bodies to be retrieved"
Indonesia 2009 © Juan-Carlos Tomasi
Near the city of Padang, an MSF staff member assesses a village hit by the earthquake.
Three days after a magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck off the western coast of Sumatra Island, Indonesia, last week, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) emergency teams arrived in the area and began to assess the medical and non-medical needs of the population.
Here, Marlene Lee, an MSF psychologist, reports on her exploratory mission to one of the worst affected areas.
Several villages located near Tandikat, in the hills north of…
more......
Make It Happen Campaign Update
Geneva, campaign headquarters, October 7, 2009—A week since the campaign was launched, well over 7,000 e-mails have been sent to the drug companies by supporters from Japan to Mexico, Myanmar to Burkina Faso. There is relief, too, at campaign headquarters that it has come together and gone so smoothly so far.
"With ever-higher medicine costs, we need new ideas and fast if we are to continue to be able to treat people living with HIV/AIDS, let alone increase treatment for millions in need. MSF is 100 percent behind this patent pool initiative and we will work with others with…
more......
Indonesia: Rescue Work Stops While Relief Operations Carries On
Indonesia 2009 © Juan-Carlos Tomasi
The rural areas around Padang, the major city of Sumatra that was severely hit by the recent earthquake, are still in critical need of emergency relief.
A week after a severe earthquake hit the Indonesian island of Sumatra, rescue operations are coming to an end and the search for survivors has been stepped down. However, relief operations will continue with a focus on assisting the thousands of people that have lost their homes and relatives and are now living in very harsh conditions.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans…
more......
East Asia and South Pacific: MSF Provides Mental Health Support After Disasters
Indonesia 2009 © Juan-Carlos Tomasi
An MSF aid worker speaks with residents in the city of Padang a week after an earthquake ravaged parts of the city and surrounding areas.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams currently providing medical and relief aid in East Asia and the South Pacific after several natural disasters are integrating mental health care into their activities. More than a week after the traumatic events, mental health staff are beginning to train local counselors, as well as give direct psychological support.
Mourning without corpses in Indonesia
In Indonesia,…
more......
Samoa: MSF Finds Strong International Aid Response in Wake of Tsunami
Samoa 2009 © Reuters, courtesy of www.alertnet.org
A child reacts in front of the remains of her tsunami-destroyed home on the southern coast.
After nearly a week of assessments carried out in Samoa following the tsunami of September 29, a small team from Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has found that the vast majority of medical and non-medical needs have been covered. An impressive international aid response has meant that food, water, and clothing have been distributed, and people who required urgent medical care have received it.
The MSF…
more......
South Asia and South Pacific: MSF Provides Relief to Victims of Natural Disasters
Philippines 2009 © Frederic Baldini/MSF
MSF staff organize relief items for people affected by severe storms near Manila.
View larger map.
In recent weeks, Southeast Asia and the South Pacific have been hit hard by earthquakes, typhoons and extensive floods. More than 60 surgeons, doctors, nurses, logisticians and others personnel from Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) are currently taking part in the extensive aid response to the natural disasters in the Philippines, Indonesia and in the Samoan Islands, trying to provide relief to isolated areas.
The Philippines…
more......
[Voice from the Field] Philippines: �My house was washed away by the floods�
Philippines 2009 © Fred Baldini/MSF
Marco and his family of five were displaced by flooding due to two severe storms. They have sought refuge at the Pasig evacuation center in eastern Manila.
Over the past two weeks, the Philippines has been hit by Tropical Storm Ketsana and Typhoon Parma, which have killed over 300 people and displaced over 490,000. In this story, Manila residents Marco and Amy describe how flooding submerged their homes and displaced the two neighbors to one of the city’s evacuation centers where Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is…
more......
India: Severe Floods in the South Leave Millions Homeless
India 2009 © Reuters, courtesy www.alertnet.org
People wade through floodwaters in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.
Millions of people have been left homeless in the Indian states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh following floods due to heavy rains over the last week. More than 250 people are confirmed dead, according to Indian officials.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has sent two teams to assess the needs of the affected population in the districts of Kurnool and Vijaywada in Andhra Pradesh. The team in Kurnool will…
more......
Philippines: MSF Responds to Second Typhoon
Philippines 2009 © Tony Marchant/MSF
A typhoon, the second within two weeks, made landfall on the Philippines on October 3, and caused extensive damage in the northern part of the country.
A second typhoon hit the northern part of the Philippines on October 3, causing extensive material damage and killing 15 people. Approximately 170,000 people had been evacuated in anticipation of the typhoon, which has been named Parma. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has dispatched a team to Tuguegarao, the capital of the northern province Cagayan, to conduct an assessment of the…
more......
Indonesia: MSF Teams Assessing Needs After Earthquake
Indonesia 2009 © Juan Carlos Tomasi/MSF
MSF staff conduct an assessment of post-earthquake needs in Padang.
Three days after a powerful earthquake hit the Indonesian island of Sumatra—leaving close to 1,000 dead, approximately 3,000 missing, and more than 3,000 wounded—the first Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams arrived in the area.
About 20 workers—including surgeons, kidney specialists, nurses, psychologists, and logisticians—began assessing the needs in the city of Padang and surrounding area on October 3.
Massive aid sent by the Indonesian authorities and from abroad has already reached Padang, the major city…
more......
Papua New Guinea: MSF Opens Cholera Treatment Center
Papua New Guinea 2009 © Sally McMillan/MSF
At MSF's Cholera Treatment Center in Lae, a man is given a foot bath to reduce the spread of disease.
For the first time in 50 years, a cholera outbreak has hit Papua New Guinea. Mainly concentrated in the eastern Morobe province, the disease has so far infected 283 people according to official figures.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), already working in Lae, was able to mobilize quickly and assist the ministry of health in responding to the outbreak. Initially, an isolation…
more......
Italy: MSF Assists Migrant Workers Living in Appalling Conditions
Italy 2009 © Gianluigi Lopes/MSF
An undocumented migrant works in Puglia.
For the sixth consecutive year, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is providing health care to undocumented seasonal migrant workers in southern Italy. Once again, poor living and working conditions pose a serious threat to their mental and physical health.
Since mid-August, thousands of migrants have been flocking to the southern Italian region of Puglia for the annual tomato-picking season. The majority are from sub-Saharan Africa, living in Italy undocumented and in appalling sanitary conditions in abandoned houses and cardboard shacks without…
more......
[Press Release] Nutrition Emergency in Central African Republic
Barcelona/Paris/New York, September 22, 2009 – The southwestern area of Central African Republic (CAR) is facing a severe nutritional emergency, with more than 1,000 children at grave risk, said the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today.
After being alerted by local authorities, MSF medical teams have opened four feeding centers in the past month in Carnot, Boda, Nola, and Gamboula. MSF has also implemented a number of outpatient treatment programs. Initial assessments in some areas have revealed severe malnutrition rates over the emergency threshold of two percent. In barely six weeks, more than 1,300 children, mostly suffering…
more......
[Special Report] Make It Happen � Help Us Get HIV Drugs In The Pool
Send an e-mail
to drug companies asking them to put their drug patents in the pool.
The cost of HIV medicines is rising all the time, meaning that many people with HIV will not be able to afford life-saving medicines—unless there is a way to…
more......
Sri Lanka: Health situation in Vavuniya district
The Ministry of Health of Sri Lanka has expressed its dissatisfaction with MSF’s recent update of August 13, 2009, in that it has not given an overall picture of the effort deployed by the Health Authorities during the emergency to ensure health-care provision for the displaced in the camps located in Vavuniya district.
The Ministry of Health of Sri Lanka has mobilized significant resources to provide health care in the camps. It has not been the intention of MSF to disregard these efforts.
Generally in its communications, MSF focuses on its own medical activities, patient’s experiences, and on the…
more......
Southern Sudan: MSF Treats More Wounded in Jonglei State
Sudan 2007 © Sven Torfinn
Patients wait in front of the pharmacy of an MSF clinic in Pieri, Jonglei State.
On Sunday, September 20, yet another violent clash broke out in Duk Patdiet, Jonglei State, in Southern Sudan. This is part of an escalating wave of violence in the region that has been ongoing since the beginning of the year.
To date, a total of 43 wounded people have arrived at the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) clinic in Pieri. Those who were fortunate were brought by family members on makeshift stretchers.…
more......
Russian Federation: MSF Provides Mental Health Care in Ingushetia
Ingushetia, Russian Federation 2008 © Misha Friedman
A displaced Chechen girl takes shelter in Ingushetia.
Podcast
MSF offers counseling to Ingushetia civilians living in a heightened state of fear
With the deterioration of security in Ingushetia, people live in fear for their own safety of that of their relatives. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is one of few aid organizations still on the ground and witnessing the severe impact violence is having on the population, whose suffering goes largely unnoticed.
Ingushetia, a small Russian republic in the…
more......
[Press Release] Drug Companies Called On to Pool HIV Patents
Send an e-mail
to drug companies asking them to put their drug patents in the pool.
Video
Why We Need a Patent Pool
New York/London, September 30, 2009 – The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today called on nine of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies to help accelerate the availability of new treatments for millions of people living with HIV/AIDS, by pooling their patents on a list of key HIV medicines.
more......
Guinea: MSF Assists Victims of Conakry Violence
Hospitals in Conakry have been overwhelmed by an influx of hundreds of wounded following the violent repression of a large-scale protest in the Guinean capital. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has teams present in the city and is providing hospitals and health centers with medical material and assisting with evacuating, treating, and feeding of the wounded.
At least 300 people, including women and children, have sought medical help at Donka hospital shortly after security forces opened fire on thousands of demonstrators gathered in a stadium. Two MSF ambulances have been picking up…
more......
[Podcast] MSF Frontline Reports
We take you to northern Nigeria, where MSF is providing surgery to repair fistulas – life-altering internal injuries that can happen to women who endure prolonged, complicated labor. In Burkina Faso, malnutrition is at its annual peak and MSF is responding.We’ll hear from an MSF doctor who was there at the same time last year. You'll also hear emergency updates from MSF projects around the world.
more......
Philippines: Flood Victims Brace for Next Typhoon
Philippines 2009 © Reuters
A crowd walks through a flooded street in Pateros, east of Manila
Hear Oifa Bouriachi, MSF’s emergency coordinator in Manila:
"We have done assessments since the rain..."
"The official figures are now pointing..."
It has begun raining again in the Philippines and another typhoon is forecast for this weekend. Tropical Storm Ketsana, which hit last Saturday, caused major flooding in and around the capital, Manila, displacing 140,000 people. This includes 70,000 people who are now staying in evacuation centers. Many areas are still underwater…
more......
East Asia: MSF Responds to Disasters in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Samoa Islands
Indonesia 2009 © Reuters
People gather near a collapsed shopping mall after an earthquake hit Padang, on Indonesia's Sumatra Island.
Several Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) emergency teams have already arrived or are en route to countries in East Asia after a succession of natural disasters in the region. In Indonesia, the Philippines, and Samoa islands, MSF will focus its activities on meeting unmet needs, from surgical care to distribution of relief items.
Current Activities
The Philippines: Tropical storm Ketsana hit the northern Philippines on September 26, killing 240 people and displacing…
more......
[Video] CAR: MSF responds to nutritional emergency
With more than 1,000 children facing a severe nutritional emergency in southwestern Central African Republic (CAR), Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is stepping up its activities in the area.
more......
Philippines: MSF Treats 80 Flood Victims
On September 26, the Tropical Storm Ketsana hit the northern Philippines, causing the death of 240 people and displacing 450,000, according to official reports. The province of Rizal, southeast of Manila, is one of the areas that has been hardest hit by the floods.
After a quick assessment of the needs in Rizal, a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) medical team began to provide medical care to people in an evacuation center in the location of Montalban, east of Manila. Around 80 medical consultations were provided on September 30.
People, generally the…
more......
[Ideas & Opinions] The Fight of the Wounded is Far From Over in Iraq
On August 19, two attacks in Baghdad killed 95 people and wounded nearly 600. These two particularly deadly attacks were a startling reminder of the violence borne by the Iraqi people since the start of the war. Although the conflict's intensity has declined gradually in recent months, Iraq has been the stage of regular, bloody and indiscriminate attacks for more than six years, producing large numbers of victims. The media report them like clockwork, at the risk of turning the victims into abstractions through the sheer routine of the exercise.
The Iraqi health system, itself wounded…
more......
Indonesia: MSF Sends Teams After Quake
Indonesia 2009 © Reuters
People leave a collapsed building after an earthquake hit Padang, on Indonesia's Sumatra Island.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has sent emergency teams to Indonesia following yesterday’s powerful earthquake that authorities say has killed more than 750 people and left thousands trapped under rubble. The magnitude 7.6 quake struck off the western coast of Sumatra Island. The worst affected areas are said to be the cities of Padang and Pariaman.
Indonesian authorities have sent significant medical assistance and food to the area. MSF has been…
more......
[Voice from the Field] CAR: �There are children that die but we succeed in keeping many others alive.�
CAR 2009 © MSF
Carol Calero is a field physician for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Currently she is working in the nutritional emergency in southwestern Central African Republic (CAR). In this interview, she talks about being in the heart of a health emergency and of the positive cases that keeps her spirits up.
The therapeutic feeding center in Boda opened at the beginning of August and three weeks later, you opened another feeding center in Nola. What were the first days of the operation like?
We were extremely busy in the…
more......
Guinea: MSF Teams Treat More Than 400 Victims of Violence
Guinea 2009 © Reuters
A patient recovers in Donka hospital in Conakry.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams in Guinea were shocked by the degree of violence following events on Monday, when demonstrators were attacked and gunned down by security forces in the Guinean capital of Conakry. MSF helped treat more than 400 wounded, a third of whom had serious injuries, at health facilities in Donka and Matam.
Prior to the violent outbreak, there were indications that the mass protest on Monday could potentially lead to violence.
more......
Philippines: MSF Prepares Emergency Assistance to Flood Victims
On September 26, the tropical storm Ketsana hit the northern Philippines, causing the death of 240 people and displacing 450,000, according to official reports.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has dispatched a team of medical and logistical staff to Rizal, near the capital of Manila, to assess areas affected by the flooding in order to decide how MSF can best provide support and emergency medical assistance.
MSF is currently running a project on Mindanao Island, in the south of the country, providing medical care to displaced people.
more......
MSF Welcomes HIV Vaccine Trial With Cautious Optimism
An HIV vaccine trial in Thailand involving 16,000 volunteers showed potentially promising results as transmission of the virus was cut by a third. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) welcomes the initiative as it opens up a new chapter in HIV vaccine research.
"As the first vaccine trial to show any significant efficacy, it gives hope for the development of an effective vaccine in the future" said Paul Cawthorne from the MSF Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines in Bangkok. “We welcome this news, but with cautious optimism, as the potential vaccine today offers only 30 per…
more......
