Posted on 1 September, 2012

It’s a kind of medical utilitarianism: the patients’ needs come before everything. And people appreciate it: at a checkpoint, a man always gave us bananas because we saved his leg. They show us their babies in the street, and they remind us that the birth was difficult but that they’re still there.

Anna Halford, returning from a four-month mission as a project coordinator in DRC, reflects on the work MSF does to help people enduring daily violence.

Despite a volatile security situation, MSF continues to provide free health care in four reference hospitals, 12 health centers, and four health posts in North Kivu, as well as in four reference hospitals, 19 health centers, and five health posts in the province of South Kivu. There are also a number of cholera treatment centers (CTCs), mobile clinics, and emergency response activities.

At the project in Masisi, MSF performed 105,681 medical consultations in 2011. In the Masisi hospital, 7,226 inpatients were admitted for hospital care and 3,947 women gave birth for free.

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...

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