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South Sudan

Activity Update, May 2016

Project Update - 15 Jul 2016
 
Teams are  providing mobile clinics in Gudele 1 and Gudele 2 today, where approximately 3000 people are sheltering after having been displaced by intense fighting.
South Sudan

Our patients are telling us terrible stories

"In escaping from the violence, many people lost family members. Today I met an eight-year-old boy whose mother and father were both shot and who now has no one to take care of him. I saw a girl of 12, her three-year-old sister in her arms, come for a consultation, saying she had lost both parents. " Voices from the Field - 15 Jul 2016
 
Mandera County in Kenya’s North Eastern Region is the latest county to be affected by a cholera outbreak that has been ongoing in the country for approximately 17 months. Since April, almost 800 cases have been reported in Mandera including 11 deaths. 
The outbreak is mainly concentrated in Mandera Township, home to around 90,000 people. 
At the same time, an outbreak of the mosquito-borne disease chikungunya is placing further pressure on already stretched health services. There are an estimated 260 suspected cases according to the Ministry of Health, seven of which have been confirmed by laboratory tests. Several health staff are among those affected. 
Mandera Referral Hospital has been quickly overwhelmed with cholera patients, and teams from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) are now urgently supporting the Ministry of Health to respond. MSF has constructed an 80-bed cholera treatment centre in the grounds of the hospital which started receiving patients on 26 May.
Kenya

Double cholera and chikungunya epidemic in Mandera town is under control

“The number of cholera patients has been reduced thanks to the combined efforts of the County health authorities and other organisations involved in the response,” says Liesbeth Aelbrecht, Head of Mission for MSF in Kenya. “The smooth collaboration with the local authorities and the other actors was a key element in tackling this outbreak, and we are grateful to all partners for their support. However, we have not yet reached zero cases. Only with sustained efforts to improve hygiene and living conditions, future outbreaks can be avoid Project Update - 14 Jul 2016
 
2nd anniversary of the ARV programme in Khayelitsha, a township near Cape Town, South Africa.
HIV/AIDS

No valley without shadows

‘No Valley Without Shadows’ is a personal account and tribute– as remembered by MSF staff and others - of how activists and people dying from AIDS started the biggest health revolution South Africa has ever seen: free HIV treatment for all. From 1998 to mid-2003, they used mass protests, defiance campaigns and legal action, first against profiteering pharmaceutical companies and then painfully against their former ally the South African government. Photo Story - 13 Jul 2016
 
An MSF doctor in Ethiopia takes a photo of an x-ray to send to the telemedicine service.
Medical resource

Telemedicine helps to bridge the gap between remote areas and large hospitals

Telemedicine helps to bridge the gap between remote areas and large hospitals Project Update - 13 Jul 2016
 
On Sunday and Monday MSF teams ran mobile clinics around the UN base, treating 160 and 174 people respectively. People were much sicker than we would have expected, the impact of months of ongoing insecurity. Main morbidities are malaria (due to the rainy season and limited access to bed nets), malnutrition (it is the traditional hunger gap period, but due to the conflict people have not been able to cultivate), diarrhea and upper respiratory tract infections. We also treated gunshot wounds and women who had been raped. 
 
Yesterday we shipped in two plane loads of supplies including therapeutic food, rape kits and dressings. Today our teams have handed over our activities in the UN base so that we can move further south to find those people who have been pushed further away by the fighting. We will continue to respond to the situation as it evolves.
South Sudan

Heavy fighting in Wau causing new displacement crisis

Dr David Kahindi, Deputy Medical Coordinator for MSF, has been working in South Sudan for more than three years. He recently arrived in Wau where he has been overseeing MSF’s emergency response. Voices from the Field - 29 Jun 2016
 
Many diseases spread with malnutrition. MSF was engaged in vaccination programmes alongside its other regular activities.
Ethiopia

Two years of drought followed by floods challenge the pastoral way of life

The eastern Ethiopian regions of Afar and Sitti are dry and inhospitable places for much of the year. Yet this is where many pastoralists live, moving from place to place, searching for water and pasture to feed their precious livestock. Project Update - 27 Jun 2016
 
"This is the first time MSF has been able to access Bama, but we already know the needs of the people there are beyond critical,” said Ghada Hatim, MSF head of mission in Nigeria. “We are treating malnourished children in medical facilities in Maiduguri and see the trauma on the faces of our patients who have witnessed and survived many horrors.” 

During its assessment, the MSF team counted 1233 cemetery graves located near the camp which had been dug in the past year. Many of those graves—480—were of children
“Bama is largely closed off,” said Hatim. “We have been told that people including children there half starved to death. According to the accounts given to MSF by displaced people in Bama new graves are appearing on a daily basis. We were told more than 30 people are dying a day due to hunger and illness.”
Nigeria

At least 24,000 displaced people in dire health situation in Bama

Critical humanitarian needs identified for displaced in Bama, Borno State, Nigeria Press Release - 22 Jun 2016
 
Malakal: MSF teams in Malakal worked through the nights of Wednesday and Thursday to deal with injured patients after fighting erupted in the Protection of Civilians (PoC) site on Wednesday that resulted in 18 people dead, two of them MSF South Sudanese staff members. Seventy-three patients have been admitted so far to the hospital, 46 of them with gunshot wounds. One of MSF’s main concerns is the fate of 43,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) who took shelter in the UNMISS compound. They have been squeezed into a very tight area and access to water and sanitation is of real concern. MSF does not know how long they will be permitted to remain in the facility.
South Sudan

Report details UN's failures in protecting civilians in Malakal

MSF releases a report on the response to February Malakal PoC attack Press Release - 22 Jun 2016
Four mothers posing in a corridor of the Hospital in Bili. All four of them are staying in the hospital with their child, that's suffering from a severe case of malaria. Since the beginning of the project in 2016, the pediatric ward already treated more than 4.000 cases of complicated/severe form of malaria.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

Independent medical humanitarian assistance

We provide medical assistance to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare. Our teams are made up of tens of thousands of health professionals, logistic and administrative staff - most of them hired locally. Our actions are guided by medical ethics and the principles of independence and impartiality. We are a non-profit, self-governed, member-based organisation.

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