Posted on 29 November, 2011
Dawn is just breaking when Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) counselor Aung Hein Maw begins another day of traveling through the Dawei and Myeik districts in southern Myanmar. In the early morning mist, one can just make out the silhouettes of palm trees and women working in the paddy fields. As the driver steers around the potholes, Maw checks his list of patients to visit. Most of them are “defaulters,” or patients who were diagnosed with HIV or TB-HIV co-infection at the clinic but who either failed to come back for their appointment or who have had problems adhering to the treatment.
This is troubling for many reasons. For people living with HIV, TB is the most common opportunistic infection, and the main cause of death. When patients first start on a TB treatment regimen, they should come at least once a month to the clinic so that staff can monitor their progress. However, they don’t always come.
Photo: Myanmar 2011 © Veronique Terrasse/MSF
Standing there, you could see a partially submerged school and mosque, along with the other buildings in the village. It was complete devastation.
Dr. James Kambaki, MSF project coordinator, on the scene in Pakistan after massive floods hit
The Kamrangirchar peninsula was formerly used as a dumping ground for Dhaka’s trash. Over the past several decades, however, more and more people began to live in the area. Covering just three square kilometers, the area is now home to 400,000 people- most of who have migrated from other parts of Bangladesh. Many are suffering from diarrhoeal diseases and skin rashes, often as a direct result of the unhygienic living conditions in this heavily polluted area. Toxic waste from Dhaka’s industries is released into the Buriganga river, where many people from Kamrangirchar bathe and wash their clothes. Families often live in cramped living conditions, with up to ten people sharing a room. Apart from MSF’s clinics, there are no health structures in Kamrangirchar that provide free medical care.
Urban Survivors is a multimedia project by Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in collaboration with the NOOR photo agency and Darjeeling Productions, highlighting the critical humanitarian and medical needs that exist in slums the world over.
Photo: Dhaka, Bangladesh © Stanley Greene/NOOR