Doctors Without Borders

It’s International Nurses Day on May 12th-

Let a nurse in your life know how amazing they are!

Whether they scrub-up as nurse anesthetists in an operating theater, inject a vaccine to thousands of children in one day, manage the functioning of a hospital ward, travel hundreds of miles to install a mobile clinic in isolated communities or provide first screening for people rescued from a sinking boat, they are usually the first and last face patients will see when in our care.

If doctors have no borders; nurses definitely have no limits.

Two Little Girls

Ian Cross is a doctor from the UK who is currently working at the MSF project in Kutupalong, Bangladesh. The project serves Rohingya refugees who have fled violence in neighbouring Myanmar. Here he tells the stories of two little girls who came for treatment at the clinic…

She didn’t see the soldier who fired the shot. Her father was running from the village carrying her in his arms. Her arms were around his neck. The bullet smashed through her right forearm and entered her father’s head, killing him instantly.

She didn’t talk much about what happened next. She crossed the border in to Bangladesh with her mother and little brother. Her arm was too badly damaged for us to treat in our facility at Kutupalong, so we referred her to the Memorial Christian Hospital, a couple of hours away to the north. The surgeons began by fixing the forearm bones. I reviewed her when she returned to the clinic with her arm in a cast. She couldn’t stretch out her fingers because the extensor tendons in her forearm had been destroyed by the bullet.

After a month or so, she was ready for further surgery to reconstruct the tendons. She came to the clinic this morning, proud to show me the result. She could waggle her fingers. She was delighted. Her mother was so grateful for the treatment she received that she asked us to tell the world what had happened to her daughter. How can you be shot through the eye and remain alive? This little girl didn’t see who shot her either.

The bullet entered her skull obliquely, in front of her right ear. The bullet traversed her eyeball and exited through the side of her nose. The eye was completely destroyed of course. The surgeons repaired a hole an inch across between her eye socket and the brain. The sight in her left eye is normal. Although she was unfortunate to have been shot, she was incredibly lucky to survive.

These two little girls managed to reach Bangladesh and received excellent care. But how many more died before they were able to leave Myanmar?

Here’s what’s happening in Bangladesh:

More than 422,000 people have fled to Bangladesh from Rakhine state in Myanmar within the last three weeks- this is after a wave of targeted violence against members of the Rohingya ethnic minority.

Medical facilities, including our own clinics, are completely overwhelmed.

Massive humanitarian aid is needed in Bangladesh following the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees- most have moved into makeshift settlements without adequate access to shelter, food, clean water, or latrines.

When you walk through the settlement, you have to wade through streams of dirty water and human feces.

“The situation in the camps is so incredibly fragile, especially with regard to shelter, food, and water and sanitation. One small event could lead to an outbreak that may be the tipping point between a crisis and a catastrophe.”

Learn more

We’re posting the videos to our Emmy-nominated series, “Starved for Attention,” in case you missed it! It was truly an honor to be nominated for new approaches to documentary programming.

In this second installment, “Terrifying Normalcy in Bangladesh,” under-nourished girls grow into under-nourished mothers in southern Bangladesh. Photos by Ron Haviv.

Fighting Neglect: Kala azar

Kala Azar is a neglected tropical disease responsible for 50,000 deaths every year.Kala azar is a disease that, if left untreated, is 100 percent fatal. To break the vicious cycle that leaves tropical diseases like Kala azar neglected, existing programs that diagnose and treat patients need to be expanded and medical research to develop simpler, more effective tools needs to be supported.

Learn more about Kala Azar and other neglected diseases.

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

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: © Stanley Greene/Noor

When you look at urban survival in a place like Bangladesh, it takes on another connotation and when you try to understand how people can live in houses built of sticks in swamps and garbage, I mean and try to survive without getting sick, or living life until death, it all seems very difficult.

- Stanley Greene

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.

“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.

The island of Bhola at the mouth of the Meghna River in southern Bangladesh suffers from one of the country’s highest rates of severe acute malnutrition (SAM). In the Starved for Attention film, “Terrifying Normalcy,” Ron Haviv captures the resignation with which Bhola’s malnourished mothers and children accept a chronically meager food supply.