Photo: Jeannine Ntunzwenimana holds her newborn baby. Burundi 2012 © Sarah Elliott

MSF @ Instagram

Jeannine Ntunzwenimana, 20, was seven months pregnant when her water broke. “This is my second child, my first is three years and six months old. My first pregnancy was by c-section at the MSF hospital. My water broke early, I was very affraid because it was too soon. I went to the nearest health centre at Gitaza. It was one and a half hour walk away. An ambulance from MSF came to pick me up. The health centre called them because they said they weren’t able to help the baby. If MSF was not here, I could’ve died and my baby too. The way they welcome us is very different to other places.” Jeannine named her daughter Fridatienne Itangakubuntu who weighed 1.3 kilos when she was born two weeks ago. MSF has worked in Burundi since 1992. 

Follow us on Instagram

An Escalating Health Crisis in South Sudan

Above: Asha Jibril cares for her two-year-old daughter Aziza Haran in the ITFC at MSF’s field hospital in Batil camp. A lack of nutritious food and clean water have left Aziza severely acutely malnourished and severely dehydrated.

Since November 2011, MSF has been operating emergency programs in South Sudan for tens of thousands of refugees who fled violence in Sudan’s South Kordofan and Blue Nile States. MSF has field hospitals in five refugee camps in Unity and Upper Nile states in South Sudan (Batil, Doro, Jamam, Yida, and Gendrassa). However, resources in the camps are stretched extremely thin, and the humanitarian crisis is only worsening as more refugees arrive. Heavy rains have exacerbated the situation, flooding camps and leaving refugees—many of whom have already endured the journey from Sudan on foot—vulnerable to diseases like diarrhea, malaria, and cholera.

Photo: South Sudan 2012 © Nichole Sobecki

An Escalating Health Crisis in South Sudan

Above: Two-year-old Lastman Muthko was brought to the MSF field hospital in Doro camp earlier this morning by his mother Mariam [left]. He is suffering from severe malaria and has had difficulty breathing.

Since November 2011, MSF has been operating emergency programs in South Sudan for tens of thousands of refugees who fled violence in Sudan’s South Kordofan and Blue Nile States. MSF has field hospitals in five refugee camps in Unity and Upper Nile states in South Sudan (Batil, Doro, Jamam, Yida, and Gendrassa). However, resources in the camps are stretched extremely thin, and the humanitarian crisis is only worsening as more refugees arrive. Heavy rains have exacerbated the situation, flooding camps and leaving refugees—many of whom have already endured the journey from Sudan on foot—vulnerable to diseases like diarrhea, malaria, and cholera.

Photo:South Sudan 2012 © Nichole Sobecki

An Escalating Health Crisis in South Sudan

Since November 2011, MSF has been operating emergency programs in South Sudan for tens of thousands of refugees who fled violence in Sudan’s South Kordofan and Blue Nile States. MSF has field hospitals in five refugee camps in Unity and Upper Nile states in South Sudan (Batil, Doro, Jamam, Yida, and Gendrassa). However, resources in the camps are stretched extremely thin, and the humanitarian crisis is only worsening as more refugees arrive. Heavy rains have exacerbated the situation, flooding camps and leaving refugees—many of whom have already endured the journey from Sudan on foot—vulnerable to diseases like diarrhea, malaria, and cholera.

Photo: An MSF clinical officer speaks with a woman on her way to MSF’s outpatient department in Batil camp.
South Sudan 2012 © Nichole Sobecki

MSF Blogs: Triage Among Thousands of New Refugees

We were trying to triage everyone as they were coming off the truck, identifying the sickest and taking them to our clinical staff at the newly erected MSF clinic at T3. This is our name for the transit point at the junction of the main Jamam-Doro road and the road to KM18. After all the rain and storms of recent days, our contingency plan has kicked in. UNICEF and ACTED are now prioritizing moving all the refugees out of KM18. Each time it rains, the KM18 road becomes impassable and they have to wait for the road to dry.

So MSF has constructed a clinic, pharmacy, and observation tent in a few hours. We are ready with a NFI (non-food item) distribution so that each family can set up new temporary shelter. OXFAM have already constructed latrines and water points. Each time a truck arrives we naturally form a semi-circle around it, the medics at the front and the logisticians at the rear. I’m at the wing, also watching the refugees climbing over the side of the truck.

Ruby Siddiqui is an epidemiologist based in the Manson Unit, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)’s clinical research unit in London, United Kingdom. She is currently working on the refugee crisis in South Sudan. You can read her MSF Field Blog here.

Photo: Between 30,000 and 35,000 new refugees crossed the border from Sudan’s Blue Nile State into South Sudan’s Upper Nile State over a period of three weeks at the end of May and the beginning of June.
South Sudan 2012 © Louise Roland-Gosselin/MSF

Fighting Unusually High Malnutrition Rates in Chad and Preparing for Worse

As a food crisis continues to spread and levels of severe acute malnutrition continue to rise in Chad, MSF is expanding the number of emergency malnutrition treatment programs it is operating in the country. Even in a normal year, Chad has one of the highest rates of chronic malnutrition in the world. This year is showing signs of being worse than usual. In early 2012, in some areas of the country, rates of global acute malnutrition as high as 24 percent have already been reported among children under the age of five.

Why are there such alarming rates of malnutrition in Biltine?

February is the beginning of the hunger gap in Chad, when families traditionally begin to run out of their food stocks. This year MSF found high rates of severe acute malnutrition rates among children under five, because only 46 percent of the harvest required to feed the population was harvested, which is well below the average. Many Chadians who worked in Libya also lost their jobs and returned home. Those men have moved to other parts of Chad to find work, but the salaries are much lower, so they are sending home less money.

A staff member uses a MUAC to check a child for malnutrition at an MSF hospital in Chad.

Chad 2012 © Andrea Bussotti/MSF

Better Treatment for HIV-Positive Pregnant Women

The World Health Organization recently issued new guidelines to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV. The recommendations include getting more women on treatment sooner and staying on it for life. The guidelines have the support of Doctors Without Borders. Read more on this article from Voice of America. Photo: MSF / Brendan Bannon
MSF HIV specialist Dr. Eamonn Vitt examines an HIV positive Ugandan woman who’s 7 months pregnant. (Nov. 2009)

Afghanistan: Medical Care Suspended in Khost After Attack on MSF Hospital

MSF today suspended medical activities in its recently opened maternity hospital in Khost Province in eastern Afghanistan, after an explosion inside the hospital compound this morning. Seven people were injured in the blast, including one child.

“The suspension will continue until we receive assurances from the actors controlling the areas that medical activities can take place unhindered, and that the security of patients, medical staff, and health facilities will be respected, as previously agreed,” said Renzo Fricke, country representative for MSF in Afghanistan.

Patients currently under MSF’s care will be referred to the maternity ward in Khost Provincial Hospital. No new patients will be admitted to the MSF facility for the time being.

Photo: Afghanistan 2012 © Hilde Cortier/MSF
Inside MSF’s maternity hospital in Khost, where staff had delivered more than 600 babies since it opened a month ago.