“People are up to their necks in the water,” tells Rivkah van Barneveld, who is coordinating the emergency response in West Bengale. “Houses are either destroyed or flooded, most people can’t sleep dry. With the monsoon arriving very soon, shelter is one of the main priorities. MSF is providing families with plastic sheeting and blankets.”
PRESS RELEASE: This year, 100 years since the discovery Chagas disease, the medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is launching the campaign, “Chagas: it’s time to break the silence.” Read more...
Website: Chagas: Break the Silence
In the coming months, MSF will campaign for greater awareness and commitment to the fight against Chagas. For more information on Chagas disease and the enormous gap between the number of Chagas sufferers and those who receive treatment, go to: Chagas: Break the Silence. Visitors can participate in the MSF campaign and break the silence by sending information about this silent disease to their friends.
Along the road to Afgooye, west of Mogadishu, half a million people are living in temporary shelters made from sticks and plastic sheeting and there is very limited access to health care. There is a desperate shortage of food and water, and settlements of internally displaced people are overcrowded, posing a serious risk for epidemics, such as measles or cholera.
In Pakistan, MSF does not accept funding from any government or donor agency, and relies solely on private donations from the general public to carry out its work. MSF also runs medical programmes in Peshawar, Lower Dir, Malakand, Mansehra, Kurram Agency and Baluchistan province.
Pakistan’s Mardan District, in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), is trying to cope with an influx of more than one million people fleeing war in the region. While MSF teams have not detected alarming mortality or epidemic rates among the population, existing medical facilities in the region are trying to cope with meeting the basic health needs of an extra one million people. MSF has increased the number of hospital wards in the Mardan Medical Complex and is supporting the nearby Takht Bhai Rural Health Centre to help treat the growing number of patients.
For over half a century the Rohingya, the Muslim minority population in Myanmar, has fled the severe repression and persecution they face in their homeland to seek refuge in Bangladesh and other neighbouring countries. Increasing violence and intimidation are forcing the Rohingya to flee once again. MSF reports on the appalling living conditions and maltreatment refugees are enduring at the hands of local authorities in Kutupalong makeshift camp, Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh.
“These people have fled terrible violence and lived through the worst horrors,” said Amaury Grégoire, MSF Congo Emergency Pool co-ordinator. “They have lost a father, a mother, a husband, a wife or a child. Most of their villages have been burnt to the ground. They have been directly affected by the atrocities. Thousands of people are suffering from the violence they have lived through or seen: some have been kidnapped, raped, beaten up or simply killed.”
While Sri Lanka's Ministry of Health has set up a system to provide initial treatment to the wounded and sick people in the camps, the needs remain immense, requiring around-the-clock medical presence in the camps to respond to all emergencies.
MSF has the capacity to scale up surgical and medical care for the displaced inside the camps if authorization is given.
Many people in Galgaduud are nomads, living scattered over a vast area and frequently on the move in search of water and fodder for their goats and camels. Along with the ongoing conflict, this makes it unrealistic to launch a major vaccination campaign in the area.
Imagine coming home and having to walk through open sewage running through your neighbourhood streets and around your house. There is no clean running water here - some homes have been without clean water for a year - so they are forced to drink from any source.
Rio de Janeiro - May 2009
A daily photo blog focusing on MSF field activities, with emphasis on the particularly creative, arresting and visually engaging images. See more...
Imagine coming home and having to walk through open sewage running through your neighbourhood streets and around your house. There is no clean running water here - some homes have been without clean water for a year - so they are forced to drink from any source.
