“First off, I couldn’t breathe because of the smell then second..there’s people washing in a river absolutely polluted with garbage, dead animals, dead fruit, drinking it, bathing in it, swimming in it, I mean that in itself has to be unsafe, unsanitary.” - Stanley Greene

14.8 million people are currently living in Dhaka. The city’s population has doubled in the last 20 years. The growth of industries like jute and garment manufacturing continues to draw ever more Bangladeshis into the city. The poorest slum inhabitants run a high risk of contracting communicable diseases due to overcrowding, unsanitary and substandard housing, and lack of access to quality health care. There are now more than 5,000 slum areas in Dhaka and development of infrastructure and health facilities is struggling to keep pace.

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.

Urban Survivors take the visitor on a virtual journey through five slums- in Dhaka, Johannesburg, Karachi, Nairobi and Port-au-Prince- where MSF is running projects. The website lets the visitor discover more about the daily lives of people in these slums, the challenges they face, and what MSF is doing to address their humanitarian needs.

Urban Survivors features photo material by renowned, award-winning NOOR photographers Stanley Greene, Alixandra Fazzina, Francesco Zizola, Jon Lowenstein and Pep Bonet.

Photo: © Stanley Greene/Noor