Voices from the Field - 30 Jun 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

Mahmud, 25, from Rawa in Syria leans on his crutches in the corridor of the Al-Mowasah Hospital in Amman. He admits that he is a militant from the Free Syrian Army and was wounded 02 April 2013 when a bullet shattered his right leg. He says that before joining the opposition group he was detained and tortured by the government.

Greece

Helping Victims of Violence' move on with their lives

Voices from the Field - 24 Jun 2016

Syria

MSF staff on working at Al Salamah hospital, Azaz

“I had the opportunity to work in Germany but I refused,” says Thurayia Zein Al Abideen, a paediatrician at MSF’s Al Salamah hospital in Azaz district, northern Syria. “I want to work in Syria, because people need us and we are facing a huge shortage of doctors.” Voices from the Field - 23 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

MSF mobile clinic in Gari Wanzam where thousands of newly displaced people from Bosso district have have sought refuge in the last days.

Niger

Humanitarian aid is barely in place in the Diffa region

MSF delivers water supplies and provides healthcare to people recently displaced by violence in the southeast of Niger. Project Update - 21 Jun 2016

Portrait of Hussein Shuhaib, 27 from Syria.

'Here we have suffered a lot. For example, in this camp there are 12,000-13,000 human beings. My children are getting sick.
I’m a father, I have two children, my family are with me. We’ve been here for 9 days is this not shameful? We demand they open up this border crossing, we have children, families, women, babies. The most difficult thing is the children’s illnesses. I have a one year old child, and another who is two and a half years old they cannot handle this weather, this rain, this sun See, they are staying in small tents These are summer tents, not for the winter. My children don’t understand why the border crossing is closed. My son always asks:
“Dad, when are we going home? Dad, when are we going home?” Of course! We left the war as refugees, not as tourists, or a vacation. If there was nothing happening in Syria, we wouldn’t have left.

Refugees, IDPs and people on the move

Refugee Day 2016: Don't let this be the #LastRefugeeDay!

More than 60 million people are displaced around the world in search of safety and protection. They come from conflict zones and places where they are persecuted for their thoughts, their religion, their sexual orientation, their political opinions. Photo Story - 20 Jun 2016

Yemen

Treating gunshot, grenade and mine injuries in Aden

“This was the first time I was confronted with injuries caused by gunshots, grenades and mines – and they were often horrific injures,” reflects Helmut Shoengen, an anaesthetist/doctor who recently returned from working in Aden, Yemen with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Voices from the Field - 15 Jun 2016

Yemen

In the two months of ‘ceasefire’, at least 700 civilians injured by heavy fighting in Taiz

Press Release - 14 Jun 2016

In January 2016 MSF opened a PHCC in Al Shuada, a very poor neighbourhood in the district of Abu Graib, west of Baghdad.
In the first month 4.000 consultations were carried out by our medical team.
The organisation offers medical services in 3 other locations in the district. Another mobile team is active in camps close to Bzibiz bridge on the border with Anbar.
In Baghdad OCG employs 72 national staff 13 expatriate staff

Iraq

There is a lack of humanitarian actors in Baghdad area

By Robert Onus, field coordinator for the MSF project in Abou Ghraib, Baghdad Voices from the Field - 10 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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