Since 28 September 2015, an MSF team has been working in the 11-bed emergency room at Umaru Shehu hospital in Maiduguri, the capital of the Borno State, northern Nigeria. In response to recent attacks that caused many injuries, MSF began performing trauma surgery at the hospital on 28 December.
The Umaru Shehu hospital treats patients referred from smaller health structures, and also provides care to people wounded during attacks. MSF provided essential medicines and medical materials, refitted the operating theatre and set up a mass casualty plan. Every week, MSF receives about 200 patients in the hospital's emergency room.
On October 1st, MSF staff and the hospital’s teams treated 20 patients (including 6 children and 11 women) wounded during yet another wave of suicide bomb attacks. Islamist militants launched an unusually large attack on the city beginning on the evening of 27 December, which was followed by a series of suicide bombings on the 28th.
In response to the high number of wounded, MSF began performing trauma surgery on 28 December in Maiduguri’s Umaru Shehu Hospital. In three days, MSF treated about 40 patients, including seven critical cases.
"While many adults were treated, our team was struck by the number of children presenting with shrapnel wounds," said Peter Orr, MSF emergency coordinator. "The addition of our surgical team allowed us to treat patients on site rather than refer them to the one city hospital with trauma surgery capacity from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which was also handling many cases."
Maiduguri currently hosts over a million people displaced by attacks and violence throughout the state of Borno, in northeastern Nigeria. Other MSF activities in the city include primary health care, maternal health care, therapeutic feeding for severely malnourished children, epidemic and health surveillance, and water and sanitation projects.
