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Aphe, care taker of Abino (pseudonym), 20 years old, MDR-TB patient gives her anti-TB medicines. Abino says, “I live in a big family of 10 members. Yet no one cares for me or talks to me, except my sister in law, Aphe. When I could not get up, she brought me food and water. She gives me the medicines on time every day.” 

Since 2010, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has been comprehensively supporting the Civil Hospital in Mon – a remote area of India’s north easternmost state, Nagaland. Together with the local authorities, MSF started treating patients with drug-susceptible TB and drug-resistant-TB (DR-TB) in April 2012.  Since then, around 255 sensitive TB patients have been put on treatment and eight DR-TB patients. People in this remote and mountainous region have severely limited access to health care, with very few health workers and almost no medical specialists. They must often travel for hours to reach the nearest hospital. For this reason, MSF has introduced the decentralized model of care in Mon. Medicines are given to these patients and their caretakers on a monthly basis, so that they can avoid the need to travel to clinic more often – an expense they can rarely afford.
Tuberculosis

DR-TB drugs under the microscope: Sources and prices for drug-resistant tuberculosis medicines - 3rd Edition

MSF and the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease today released DR-TB Drugs Under the Microscope, a report on the prices, sources, access environment and R&D landscape for DR-TB medicines. Report - 30 Oct 2013
 
Bedaquiline pills are counted in a Kara-Suu district FGP (Family Group Practitioner) clinic. Kara-Suu district.
Tuberculosis

First new TB drug in 50 years risks being squandered without better research and pricing strategies

First new TB drug in 50 years risks being squandered without better research and pricing strategies. Press Release - 30 Oct 2013
 
Sudanese refugees began streaming across the border into South Sudan in June 2011 when conflict erupted between the Khartoum government and the rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) in Sudan’s South Kordofan State. At the height of the crisis in Yida camp last summer, high mortality rates were reported among young children admitted to MSF’s hospital with respiratory tract infections, such as pneumonia, one of the leading causes of death. MSF determined that vaccinating with the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) could result in a substantial mortality reduction in Yida. MSF has been working since September 2012 to procure PCV but faced significant delays due to lengthy negotiations and international legal procurement constraints. MSF was eventually able to obtain the vaccine from GSK at a reduced price, but delays have now pushed the planned vaccination into the logistically challenging rainy season.

The objective is to immunize approximately 5,000 children under the age of 2 against several pathogens, including haemophilus influenza type B and pneumococcus. This is the first time that PCV is being used in South Sudan and one of the first vaccines to be implemented in compliance with the new WHO emergency vaccination recommendations.
Access to medicines

Global alliance for vaccinations meets to examine progress, MSF points to needed policy changes

Key policy changes are urgently needed at GAVI Alliance to help reduce the number of children not benefitting from vaccination globally (22.6 million in 2012), MSF said ahead of meeting in Stockholm. Press Release - 28 Oct 2013
 
This IDP camp in Al Safira district (Aleppo province) is empty. After the October attack, IDPs  had fled north .
MSF had distributed some tents to IDPs. A medical student was running an OPD set up with MSF support
Syria

Civilians forced to flee Al Safira under heavy bombardment

More than 130,000 people have fled the district of Al Safira, in Aleppo province Press Release - 25 Oct 2013
 
Boost hospital, Lashkargah, Helmand province.<br/>
Attacks on medical care

Don't Shoot the Ambulance: Medicine in the Crossfire

As physicians and hospitals in war zones multiply, their facilities have increasingly become military targets. Journal article - 24 Oct 2013
 
Twenty percent of all the babies born in the world each year—the equivalent of nearly five times the children born yearly in the United States—are not getting the basic vaccines they need to be protected from killer diseases, such as measles.And that’s why Venetia Dearden traveled to West African nation of Mali with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) to see firsthand the importance of vaccines to families and the lengths to which they must go to get them. When MSF teams stage vaccination campaigns in the West African nation of Mali, mothers will come from hours away, sometimes days away.In the first year of their life, children must receive vaccines five separate times. In certain parts of the world, it can be extremely difficult for children and their caregivers to come so often if they live far away from a vaccination point or can't afford the cost of transportation. As in many other countries, these women, who are overwhelmingly the stewards of their families when it comes to health issues, want the protection vaccines can provide them and their children against several potentially deadly diseases that plague the region.In the best-case scenario, MSF and other agencies would bring the vaccines to them, wherever they lived, in whatever conditions. But this isn’t possible at present, because many of the vaccines available today are not tailored for the difficult environments in which they must be used. To give but one example: establishing and sustaining cold chain is very difficult in places where electricity is hard to come by, to say nothing of ice. That’s why MSF has been advocating for a global approach to vaccine development and dissemination that takes into account the conditions in the countries where these vaccines are most needed to half preventable deaths, as well as the particular strains of diseases found in various locations.
Neglected diseases

The drug and vaccine landscape for neglected diseases (2000–11): a systematic assessment

This paper studies the research and development pipeline of drugs and vaccines for neglected diseases from 2000 to 2011. Journal article - 24 Oct 2013
 
MSF expatriates Caroline Voûte and Frankin Frias Diaz visit an improvised health post managed by IDPs nurses supported by Medair.
Democratic Republic of Congo

“People have simply been abandoned" in South Irumu

Violent clashes in South Irumu, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, have forced more than 100,000 people to flee their homes. MSF calls on all parties to the conflict to respect civilians and healthcare facilities. Press Release - 24 Oct 2013
 
In Honduras, there are four different types of dengue, the population are in high risks of infection particularly during the rainy season, from May to November, when the mosquito responsible for spreading the disease proliferates.
Honduras

MSF fights deadly outbreak of dengue fever

MSF teams are responding to an epidemic of haemorrhagic dengue fever that is spreading through San Pedro Sula, Honduras’ second city. Project Update - 23 Oct 2013
 
Dr Franziska Goettle (right) examines a malnourished child in the inpatient therapeutic feeding centre in the Dera Murad Jamali District Headquarter Hospital in eastern Balochistan, Pakistan.

MSF supports the Dera Murad Jamali District Headquarter Hospital by providing emergency obstetric care, neonatal and paediatric inpatient care, as well as therapeutic feeding programme, to local and displaced population.
Pakistan

Access Denied

We remain committed to providing impartial medical humanitarian assistance elsewhere in Balochistan and in other parts of Pakistan. Op-Ed - 21 Oct 2013
 
Makeshift IDP camp in Bossangoa.
Central African Republic

Fighting reaches unprecedented levels of violence

Press Release - 16 Oct 2013
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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