slideshow: No Choice: Thousands risk death crossing Gulf of Aden
Chagas: it's time to break the silence
Millions of people are infected with Chagas disease yet they do not know.
They can die in silence, without asking for help, without knowing why. An MSF specialty site focusing on Chagas
MSF teams treat wounded from Lower Dir explosion in Pakistan
Following the explosion in Lower Dir district, North West Frontier Province of Pakistan today, Ministry of Health and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams working in the emergency room in Timurgara district hospital, received 126 wounded people, including children. Find out more...
“The number 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 is incredibly complex and all parties are to blame for the high numbers of deaths and injuries, but indiscriminate shelling into densely populated areas is totally unacceptable.”
MSF calls on all belligerents, including the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), the African Union Peacekeeping force (AMISOM) and opposition groups to take all measures to minimise the risk of civilian casualties through a full implementation of the principles of distinction and proportionality.
More than ten years since Italy’s migrant centres were set up, their management still seems to be conditioned by an emergency type approach. Services seem to be have been organised to satisfy only the most basic needs, with no regard for creating acceptable conditions for psychological and physical wellbeing of detainees.
Services are insufficient and deteriorating, basic requirements are unmet. Health authorities are absent, MSF is denied entry to the Lampedusa and Bari centres. MSF calls for the Trapani and Lamezia Terme centres to be closed down.
The very considerable gaps in the country's healthcare provision before the earthquake meant that MSF's emergency facilities were always busy. The disruption of so much of the most basic medical care means that alongside the continuing dressing of injuries from the quake there is also a flow of every kind of patient.
VIDEO: Adapting to needs in Haiti
Emergency medical work done by MSF in Haiti is diversifying. The number of operations remains very high, but there is an increasing number of people in need of post-operative care. Find out more...
VIDEO: Survivors determined to help in Haiti
Like many Haitians, these MSF staff members have been hard hit by the earthquake too. Many have lost relatives and most have suffered material loss. Despite what has happened to them, they are back working with the MSF teams.
"I am doing what I can. I am giving what I am able to give." MSF Haitian national staff member Find out more...
Mental health, issues of malnutrition and needed long term post-operative care means MSF staff are increasing the range and depth of assistance in post-earthquake Haiti. Water and sanitation needs are also growing with huge numbers of displaced in need of a clean supply and environment.
The range of work MSF is providing in Haiti with the survivors of the earthquake has been increasing as the needs and priorities shift but the core medical services in hospitals and clinics still dominate. Examples of those come from projects in Port au Prince, where the teams are working in rather different surroundings.
The core medical activities in Haiti are still very much about treating people who were injured in the quake, with surgery continuing and post operative care expanding. But as Rosa Crestani, one of MSF's Emergency Medical Coordinators explains, there is a second phase underway, in which the operating table is still central.
Other buildings are being used as hospitals, as well as tented and inflatable facilities - there teams have started performing surgeries and have space for around 180 patients in the tented wards. Terrible memories of what happened to solid buildings during the earthquake have made many patients fearful of staying inside a normal hospital. The soft, flexible walls of the new field hospital make a big difference.
MSF has to record with great regret that we now know that four of our colleagues were killed in the January 12 earthquake. Another four who had recently worked with us also lost their lives, and we are trying to confirm what has happened to six staff, who are still missing.
Because all the working hospitals in the city have been overwhelmed for the last ten days with seriously injured people, the more routine illnesses or longer term care of wounds have been hard to manage. The clinics find those patients whose more minor injuries and illnesses can easily deteriorate if neglected.
23/01/2010
Audio: Haiti's 'crush' victims receive life-saving care
"It is quite unusual that six days after the disaster you still find so many crush patients, because normally you have to be as early as possible, but we have seen that, the day before yesterday there were a lot of patients that were referred to our centre with crush syndrome so we think there are still patients to come, a lot of patients to come," said Stefaan Maddens. Find out more...
The MSF teams in Port au Prince, Haiti, 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 care.
“We have had five patients in Martissant health center die for lack of the medical supplies that this plane was carrying,” said Loris de Filippi, emergency coordinator for the MSF’s Choscal Hospital in Cite Soleil. “I have never seen anything like this.”
“It is like working in a war situation,” said Rosa Crestani, MSF medical coordinator for Choscal Hospital. “We don’t have any more morphine to manage pain for our patients. We cannot accept that planes carrying lifesaving medical supplies and equipment continue to be turned away while our patients die. Priority must be given to medical supplies entering the country.”
A series of photographs from Haiti by Bruno Stevens and Julie Rémy who are currently in Haiti photographing the immense devastation after the January 12 earthquake that masured 7.0 on the Richter scale. MSF teams were already in the country but more staff and supplies have been airlifted to the country in order to increase assistance to the thousands searching for medical aid.
MSF deeply shocked by sudden forced evacuation of 7,000 displaced people in Lower Dir district (North West Frontier Province), in Pakistan
On, January 25, our teams based in Munda learned that armed military personnel were forcibly evacuating families from the Munda camp for displaced people and the market building, where MSF has been working for the past two months. Find out more...
Port-au-Prince – January 20, 2010
A daily photo blog focusing on MSF field activities, with emphasis on the particularly creative, arresting and visually engaging images. See more...
More than ten years since Italy’s migrant centres were set up, their management still seems to be conditioned by an emergency type approach. Services seem to be have been organised to satisfy only the most basic needs, with no regard for creating acceptable conditions for psychological and physical wellbeing of detainees.
Emergency medical work done by MSF in Haiti is diversifying. The number of operations remains very high, but there is an increasing number of people in need of post-operative care.
