Posts tagged NEWS
We’re excited to let you know about MSF.TV, an online TV station that we’re launching on 2 October at 12:00pm AEST, taking you behind the scenes of Médecins Sans Frontières. We’d love you to get behind it to help us reach as many people as possible, so they get to know who we are and what we do. Visit http://bit.ly/Rm8yx8 for more info.
The Fulbright Association will present its 2012 J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding to the international medical humanitarian organization MSF. The formal award ceremony is scheduled for September 8, 2012, at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
“This is the first time the Prize has been given to an organization rather than to individuals,” said Patricia Krebs, president of the Fulbright Association. “MSF was a unanimous first choice of the International Selection Committee because of the shared goals of the two organizations in promoting global understanding and humanitarian principles.”
Photo: A patient is examined at an MSF mobile clinic in Besse.
Central African Republic 2011 © Anna Surinyach
As the sun went down and the ridges of the Mitumba mountains turned a smoke blue, a line of mothers sat quietly on a wooden bench in front of the nurses’ station in the pediatric tent. The children lying prostrate in their laps were new admissions, too weak to protest against the nurses, who wore miner’s headlamps to help search for a vein to place a drip.
Chris Bird, a former Reuters and Guardian reporter, put down his notepad and left more than 10 years of news reporting to study medicine with the intention of returning to the front lines where he can be hands-on saving lives and alleviating the kind of suffering he once wrote about.
Here he talks about18-month-old Bahati’s struggle to survive severe malaria.
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Somalia: Providing Humanitarian Aid on al-Shabab’s Turf
Listen to an interview with MSF’s Duncan Mclean on PRI’s The World - the topic was the Humanitarian Negotiations Revealed book in the context of Somalia.
Duncan Mclean helps manage the group’s work in Somalia. He says that the hospital Doctors Without Borders operates on the outskirts of Mogadishu treats any injured individual, including al-Shabab fighters.
Photo: Somalia, September 2011. (Photo: Yann Libessart/MSF)
MSF’s Dr. Greg Elder appeared on CNN to talk about the Syrian regime’s campaign of unrelenting repression against people wounded in demonstrations and the medical workers trying to treat them.
While MSF cannot work directly in Syria, it has collected testimonies from wounded patients treated outside the country and from doctors inside Syria. The testimonies, collected from several people from various parts of the country, point to a crackdown on the provision of urgent medical care for people wounded in the ongoing violence in Syria.
“In Syria today, wounded patients and doctors are pursued, and risk torture and arrest at the hands of the security services,” said Marie-Pierre Allié, MSF president. “Medicine is being used as a weapon of persecution.”
The hospitals that I’ve visited since the clashes started are often quite chaotic scenes with many doctors and nurses unable to reach the hospital because either they live in areas that are still not secure or they can’t travel through the city from one side to another. There’s a shortage of health workers inside the facilities, but there is a huge number of people who are responding as volunteers and who are going to the hospitals to try and support and assist where they can. But this is creating quite a chaotic environment.
Some hospitals have run out of life-saving medication and equipment. There is little electricity and insufficient fuel to run ambulances and some crucial equipment. The current fighting in the city will put strained medical facilities under even more pressure.
Jonathan Whittal, MSF’s emergency coordinator in Libya.
In Tripoli, where fighting has increased dramatically in recent days, several medical facilities report serious shortages of materials and staff. MSF is preparing to expand our medical response in western Libya to meet urgent humanitarian needs. Learn more.
An aerial view of the largest refugee camp in the world.
“With the stream of news reports and images showing the Somali refugee crisis in Kenya and Ethiopia getting worse by the day, as thousands of people flee the famine in their war-torn country, it is easy to forget that the refugee situation is not new.” -Samuel Loewenberg reporting from Kenya.
Bahrain: Armed Raid On MSF Office and Detention of Staff Member
BRUSSELS, AUGUST 3, 2011 — The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today condemned an armed raid on its premises in Bahrain and the subsequent detention of one of its staff members.
On July 28, armed security personnel violently raided MSF’s premises in Manama, damaging office property and confiscating all medical and office equipment and supplies. A Bahraini MSF volunteer, Saeed Mahdi, who works with the organization as a translator and driver, was arrested.
Since February, when demonstrations began in Bahrain, MSF has seen almost 200 injured and ill patients who did not seek care in health facilities because they feared being arrested for any involvement in protests. The MSF team has seen patients in villages across the country who have refused urgently needed hospitalization due to the high risk of arrest, and others who were severely beaten in jail. Full press release.
With all populations in crisis, it is challenging enough for health agencies and humanitarian aid workers to gain access to, and the trust of, communities—especially populations already skeptical of the motives of any outside assistance.
Alleged Fake CIA Vaccination Campaign Undermines Medical Care
Doctors Without Borders Condemns Use of Medical Aid for Military Objectives; Reported Ruse Risks Damaging Trust Critical for Health Workers and Humanitarian Aid
Photo: Pakistan 2005 © Ton Koene/MSF
Two surgeons, one Libyan and one from outside the country, carry a child they’ve just treated for burn wounds at MSF-supported Kasr Ahmed Hospital in Misrata. (Photo: 2011 © Eymeric Laurent-Gascoin/MSF)
Two-year-old, Aden Salaad, looks up toward his mother, unseen, as she bathes him in a tub at a Doctors Without Borders hospital, where Aden is receiving treatment for malnutrition, in Dagahaley Camp, outside Dadaab, Kenya, Monday, July 11.
With a population of almost 400,000, the Dadaab Refugee Camp in north-east Kenya is beginning to resemble a city. Like in any fast-growing metropolis, the morning rush here can be a miserable time; the infrastructure creaks louder than at any other part of the day. This must be the most desperate rush-hour of any city in the world.
At around 8 a.m., a huge crowd of new residents begin to stream through the gates of the reception center. Most have been forced here by the worst drought to affect East Africa for 60 years – described by the United Nations as a “humanitarian emergency.” Continue reading.
More info on our malnutrition intervention:
MSF Stepping Up Malnutrition Intervention As Horn of Africa Food Crisis Worsens
It’s 40 degrees heat in the day [approximately 104° F], malaria is endemic, and the rainy season is beginning. They may have escaped bombs, but it’s still an emergency for these people.
Carole Coeur, a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) emergency coordinator in South Sudan
South Sudan is a chronically food insecure area where less then 25 percent of people have access to even basic health care. The annual hunger gap—a time of year between harvests when food is particularly scarce—has started, and the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by violence, along with an additional 300,000 southerners who returned from homes outside the region in anticipation of independence, place a serious burden on critically limited resources such as food, water and shelter.
South Sudan: Violence And Displacement Precede Birth Of A New Nation
Melit was orphaned when his parents died during the bombings in Abyei. The elderly woman beside him is Abouk. She lost track of her family members during the chaos of fleeing the violence. Melit and Abouk were strangers before they found each other while fleeing to Juong Pajok. It took them six days to reach the village; now they take care of each other.
South Sudan: State of Emergency
Photo: Gaël Turine/VU
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Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international medical humanitarian organization working in more than 60 countries to assist people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
