Doctors Without Borders

Sri Lanka: End of Mission

Twenty-six years after first working in the country, we’ve handed over the last remaining projects in the country to the local government and other NGO efforts. Watch the video to learn what it takes to transition care, and empower the community.

Photo: The entrance to Mullaitivu Hospital. Sri Lanka 2012 © Eddy McCall/MSF

MSF Hands Over Its Last Remaining Hospital in Sri Lanka

Handing over MSF facilities to the local government and other NGO efforts is a sign of stability in a previously conflicted region. Over the last 18 months, there has been a progressive transfer of medical activities to the Sri Lankan Ministry of Health. In August 2012, MSF handed over its remaining project–a mental health program in Mullaitivu District–to World Vision.

“The partnership with the Ministry of Health teams, either in Colombo or at provincial level, led to much better access to health facilities for communities in Mullaitivu district. In terms of human resources, the government is also scaling up staff in these structures, which means MSF can now reallocate these resources to emergency contexts where medical services and facilities are in shorter supply,” said Marie Ouannes, MSF’s program manager for Sri Lanka.

In Vavuniya, an MSF physiotherapist treated a 22-year-old woman named Suvarna, whose spine was injured by a bomb blast during the war in Sri Lanka in 2009. She had been a teacher before she fled her village and was injured. Through difficult therapy sessions she regained mobility and could now use her wheelchair.

Sri Lanka 2010 © Pete Masters/MSF

2006
Sri Lanka Returns to War

As tens of thousands of people flee renewed fighting in the north of the country, MSF reopens surgical programs in north and central Sri Lanka after facing a series of setbacks from the authorities.

Learn more about MSF’s history at our website.

Photo: Sri Lanka 2007 © Henk Braam

2001
Trauma Counseling in Colombia, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, and Beyond

MSF increasingly includes mental health activities in its emergency responses around the world.

Learn more about MSF’s history at our website.

Photo: Sri Lanka 2002 © Marco van Hal

1986
Civil War in Sri Lanka
MSF organizes mobile clinics and hospital programs to treat citizens injured and traumatized in the fight between the government and the Tamil Tigers.
1986

MSF Expands
MSF opens offices in Luxembourg and Spain.

Learn more about MSF’s history at our website.

MSF Frontline Reports - Weekly Podcast

More than a year after the end of the war in Sri Lanka, people who suffered spinal injuries as a result of the conflict are struggling to start life again. We meet some of the patients at MSF’s rehabilitation unit in Pampaimadhu Hospital near Vavuniya.

Listen to the podcast.
Subscribe to MSF Frontline Reports podcast on iTunes!

As fighting raged earlier this year between the Sri Lankan military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in northeastern Sri Lanka, tens of thousands of civilians were trapped for months in a war zone reduced to a narrow strip of jungle and beach, with no aid and limited medical care.

Sri Lanka was included in out “Top 10 Humanitarian Crises of 2009” report. Learn more about MSF’s work in Sri Lanka here.

Posts tagged Sri Lanka

MSF Frontline Reports - Weekly Podcast