The Plan: Support a massive Yellow Fever vaccination campaign of 10.5 million people over the next ten days.

We’re mobilizing 100 teams of 16 people each in three health zones of Kinshasa, DRC’s capital city. Our teams will vaccinate 760,000 people, or roughly 10 percent of the target number in the city.

Yellow fever cannot be cured and the only treatment is limited to alleviating symptoms. 

It kills from 15 to 50 percent of those who develop the severe form of the disease. Vaccination is the best prevention against the disease.

A vaccination campaign on this scale comes with numerous logistical challenges, such as managing the movements of 65 vehicles in densely populated neighborhoods and ensuring that the cold chain remains effective in keeping the vaccines at the proper temperature. Every day, the teams will need 4,000 ice packs and coolers in different locations.

“Throughout the epidemic, I witnessed how communities were ripped apart. But it was very empowering to see how extremely dedicated all the national staff were, and fortunately other international actors eventually got involved. For the next epidemic, the world should stand ready to intervene much faster and more efficiently” -Hilde de Clerck, MSF epidemiologist 

buff.ly/1OkK7Ni 

Photo: A 31-year-old patient gets a checkup at Artyomovsk TB dispensary. Ukraine 2013 © Niklas Bergstrand/MSF

Once considered a disease on the decline, tuberculosis (TB) has seen a resurgence in Ukraine and several other post-Soviet countries that endured social and economic tumult after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In Ukraine, the country’s prisons in particular are a hotbed for the disease, with prevalence rates more than ten times higher than in the rest of society. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) provides treatment and support to over 140 inmates and ex-inmates suffering from multi-drug-resistant (MDR) TB in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region.

“It’s hard to sit up and I’ve got pain everywhere,” says Andriy*, 31, in a coarse voice from behind a white protective mask. A drunken brawl a few years ago lead to a jail term for violent assault and also put an abrupt end to his vocational training as a construction worker. Half a year ago, while still in prison, he was diagnosed by MSF with MDR-TB. His body is now thin and frail, and he says he has abandoned all hope of having a family and living a normal life until he is cured.

Photo: Mothers and children queue to receive food as part of treatment in Guidan Roumdji, where MSF treats malnutrition and malaria. Niger 2012 © Tanya Bindra

Op-Ed: How to Start a Child Survival Epidemic

“Running your infant to the pediatrician for a well-baby check up and shots may seem like just another chore. Who do you know who ever had measles? Many parents wonder if all those shots are really necessary in the first place. But last week, mothers, nurses, and doctors in Niger reminded me just how powerful and important these simple gestures are.”

How can improving childhood survival rates in Niger spread to a child survival epidemic? MSF pediatrician, Susan Shephered, discusses her work in the field and strategies to reduce childhood mortality worldwide. 

This article was originally published on the Huffington Post.

The Daily Dot: How Doctors Without Borders is mapping the world’s epidemics

Ivan Gayton, the head of Doctors Without Borders in Nigeria, speaks on how new technologies have had an “astonishing” effect on his organization’s effectiveness.

“If you’ve got ways to visualize your epidemiology data spatially, it can help you figure out, ‘oh that seems to be along this river,’ or ‘that seems to be consistently in this size of town.’ Those kinds of observations are very hard to make from tables of data, but they’re actually quite easy to make from maps.”

In addition to professional mapping programs like ArcGIS, aid workers have been using Google Earth. Representatives from Google even visited Gayton’s team to help train them on how to use mapping tools. It’s experiences like this that revealed to Gayton the common ground shared by the tech specter and the humanitarian world.

Gayton said these tools will continue to be invaluable as climate change, food crises, and political instability around the globe are poised to shake up longstanding notions about how diseases spread.

But the maps serve another equally important purpose: convincing governments, agencies, and the general public to confront the realities of infectious diseases.

MSF and GOOGLE had a panel discussion at SXSW this weekend in Austin:

SXSW Panel: Adapting New Technologies for Humanitarian Aid Sunday, March 11, 3:30pm Austin Convention Center, Room 6AB

Original article here.

In 2011, Chad and other sub-Saharan African countries were affected by a large-scale cholera epidemic. By late November, more than 17,200 cases of cholera (the largest number since 1996) and 459 deaths had been recorded.

In August, during the height of the epidemic, up to 1,250 cases were recorded each week. One-third of those were in the capital city, N'Djamena. At that time, 350 national and international Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) employees were managing 23 health care facilities in Massakory, Am Timan, Abou Deia, Bongor, Mandelia, Pala, Fianga, Lere, Laï and N'Djamena. “The 2011 peak was the continuation of the epidemic that broke out in the region in 2010,” says Michel-Olivier Lacharité, MSF program manager in Chad. “This explains its two very specific features: an early increase in the number of cases, well before the rainy season, and a significant geographic spread, with 37 of the country’s 61 districts affected.”

Photo: Chad 2011 © MSF