Doctors Without Borders

Locked in the outhouse

“I tried to turn the handle again – absolutely no movement. It took about 30 seconds before I fully woke up and realized the extent of the situation – I was locked in a concrete outhouse in the middle of a very hot night in Chad.
…At this point I started to really feel the 45oC (113oF) night heat, and I noticed the extremely large camel spider on the ceiling. I am not easily squeamish, but I find camel spiders frightening. They are generally quite large, and can be very aggressive.”

–Trish Newport is working for MSF as a community outreach nurse in Chad. This is her fifth mission for MSF. When not on mission, she lives and works as a nurse in the Yukon, Canada.

Read about the rest of Trish’s evening in the outhouse on her blog.

Photo: A camel spider, with cat for scale

Tens of thousands of refugees fleeing fighting in Sudan are continuing to face a full-blown humanitarian crisis, with people dying from a lack of water, adequate medical care, and shelter as they seek refuge in already-overcrowded camps.

Introducing a New Concept: Mental Health Support in Northwestern Pakistan

“I still remember there was a big bomb blast in April 2010, about 300 meters [about 984 feet] away from our hospital. Within a few minutes, dozens of injured patients were already outside the emergency room. We needed to quickly identify who needed to be attended first,” recalls Dr. Muhammad Zaher, who is working with Doctors Without Borders as assistant medical focal person in Timergara, in the Lower Dir district of northwestern Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province.

Mental health services are scarce in Pakistan, and Lower Dir is no exception. There are very few psychologists for the district’s estimated population of 1.2 million people. Indeed, the MSF team in Lower Dir knows of only one.

In response to this situation, MSF started providing mental health counseling and psychosocial support in the hospital in February 2012.

The mental health team is made up of both male and female staff. They provide individual and group counseling to patients referred from the mother-and-child health department, the emergency department, and the post-operative wards.

Photo: An MSF staff member and a young patient in the triage area of the DHQ hospital in Timergara
Pakistan 2012 © P.K. Lee/MSF

Posted on 26 June, 2012