'Maybe there is just too much real grief here'

A letter from MSF medical doctor Joe Jacob.
"I am writing from a town called Muhajariya, population 36,000, a significant proportion of whom are displaced refugees within their own country. Here we run a clinic where we are the only medical and surgical referral centre in this region, attending to the needs of a wider population of 200,000 people. Life is far from easy here, but the happiness and sheer enjoyment of living today that envelopes and dissipates the ever-present fear here, would certainly make you think otherwise." Voices from the Field - 1 Mar 2007

Chad

Displaced people forced to flee again in region gripped by sharp rise in violence

Interview with Filipe Ribeiro, the French section's head of mission in Chad.
MSF is concerned about the fate of 5,000 displaced Chadians who fled an attack on the Koloye site, in the eastern part of the country, and have disappeared in the area even as violence expands in the region. That number included 37 MSF employees. We had no information about them. We have since learned that some of displaced persons fled to Adé and Kumu, two villages further north, accompanied by the populations of neighboring villages. We still have no information on four of the 37 members of our team. Voices from the Field - 22 Nov 2006

Pakistan

One year after the earthquake in Kashmir: Interview with national staff member, Sajjad Hussein Khan, Assistant Administrator in Bagh

"The first priority was to transport injured people to Rawalpindi or Islamabad to receive adequate treatment, given that the Bagh hospital had collapsed and was completely destroyed. Voices from the Field - 10 Oct 2006

Pakistan

Interview with national staff, Samran Afzal Emanuel, Supply Officer in Islamabad

"I joined MSF just a few days after the earthquake, on October 22, 2005, as a supply officer. At that time MSF was fully involved in their struggle to save the dying population." Voices from the Field - 10 Oct 2006

Sudan

What impact does the security situation have on MSF work in Darfur

Interview between Denis Lemasson, Operations Desk for MSF in France and Bruno Jochum, Director of Operations for MSF in the Switzerland office. Voices from the Field - 17 Sep 2006

Natural hazards

Basic needs are all important in Asian quake epicenter

Appearing on BBC Newsnight, October 11, MSF Project Coordinator Jan Peter Stellema talked about the basic supplies he is trying to bring back to Lamnian, the village where he was working with two other MSF staff members when the earthquake struck. Voices from the Field - 12 Oct 2005

Indonesia

Tsunami at six months - the trauma continues

Although many people have successfully turned their back on the pain and moved on, there are others for whom the trauma continues. The importance of reaching out to these individuals couldn't be greater. Voices from the Field - 24 Jun 2005

Natural hazards

Aceh tsunami - one month later, the first volunteer looks back

Ibrahim Younis, a member of the MSF Emergency team based in Brussels, Belgium, was the first MSF staff member to arrive in Banda Aceh, Indonesia following the December 26 earthquake and tsunami that has devastated the region. He was the first MSF staff member to reach the Indonesian disaster scene in the Aceh province and was there for the first month of operations. Voices from the Field - 27 Jan 2005

Sudan

Precarious conditions remain for Sudanese trying to flee ongoing violence

More than 100,000 refugees from the Darfur region in Western Sudan are living in increasingly precarious conditions on the border in Chad, as the security situation continues to deteriorate. Cross-border attacks have increased and are now an almost a daily occurrence. Voices from the Field - 22 Mar 2004

Saving Lives and Limbs

Voices from the Field - 3 May 1999

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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