Posts tagged family
With new, better drugs for his multidrug-resistant TB, Vardan is now able to be with his family instead of in and out of the hospital. “I am young. I am 60 years old. I am still useful to my community." http://bit.ly/1if7CYg
Photo by Mathieu Fortoul/MSF
Dorassio is 23. He is among the many victims of the inter-communal violence taking place in the Central African Republic today. On January 18, he was shot in the arm in Bouar, in the country’s Northwest region. His arm had to be amputated. He was treated by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Bouar, and then transferred by plane to the Bangui Community Hospital, where our surgical teams continue to monitor his condition. Here, Dorassio waits to be moved into the operating room at the Community Hospital. This will be his fifth operation since he arrived at the hospital.
Photo by Mathieu Fortoul/MSF
Dorassio’s older sister, Cynthia, comes every day to provide support, help him wash and eat, and keep him company.
Photo by Wairimu Gitau/MSF
A mother and her four children walked hundreds of miles from Juba, South Sudan, to the Nadapal border with Kenya where they became refugees from the fighting in their home country. In Nadapal, an MSF emergency team referred them to a hospital where they were tested for measles. Read more about the conflict in South Sudan: http://bit.ly/1aohxdM
Photo by Raphael Piret/MSF
Families displaced by violence in Bangui, Central African Republic, are living under the wings of an abandoned plane in a camp where around 100,000 people have taken refuge. Fighting continues in Bangui - already more than half a million people have been driven from their homes. MSF is providing medical care and vaccinations at several sites in Bangui.
Photo by Yozo Kawabe
After 28 weeks, a widespread outbreak of measles in Katsina State, Nigeria, has ended. MSF had been regularly visiting 300 health facilities, and donated treatments for 14,290 people. Read more
Photo: Young MDR-TB patients take part in developmental activities at the pediatric hospital in Dushanbe. Tajikistan 2012 © Natasha Sergeeva/MSF
Treating “Family Tuberculosis” in Tajikstan
For the first time, children in Tajikistan with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) are receiving treatment for the life-threatening disease. MSF’s new ward in Tajikstan will treat 60-100 children with TB, with special attention to family treatment.
“For MSF, a child often serves as an entry point into a family with TB,” says Zarkua. “When we identify a sick child, we can provide the family with information on how to reduce the spread of the disease, and we can trace contacts within the family to see who else might be infected.”
Photo: Birihoya Bokani and the remaining members of his family have no permanent shelter. DRC 2012 © Juan Carlos Tomasi
A Family Destroyed by Conflict
A shabby building in Minova, on the shores of Lake Kivu, prompted MSF to launch an emergency response. The house was crowded with families who had fled two different conflicts in eastern DRC. When they are sheltered by host families, the needs of displaced people can easily go unnoticed, but this overcrowded building made them clearly visible.
Sixty-year-old Birihoya Bokani has been sheltering in the house since June, after his hometown, Ufamando I, was attacked by an armed group. His wife and two of his nine children were killed in the attack.
“When my wife was about to flee our home, armed men shot at her,” he says. “Lots of people were murdered in the fields and lots of girls aged between 12 and 15 were raped.”
As Birihoya tells the painful story of what happened to his family, one of his daughters plays with the buttons on his shirt. The eight remaining family members have no permanent shelter, but they hope that together they will manage to survive.
MSF has expanded its emergency medical programs in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in response to increasing humanitarian needs in the region.
I am awed by the mothers and fathers who have walked for days, and sometimes weeks, carrying their children to safety, away from the conflict or the famine or the natural disaster that has overtaken them. It is what I think of now when I read the blog by Ruby, the MSF epidemiologist, who has been working in the refugee camps of northern South Sudan. We all just want to look after our families, and to do that people sometimes need help.
I have been home for a while now and am only able to begin to process the experiences, the good and the not so good, of working in South Sudan, and my return from this struggling, fragile country.
From the Ground Up: Building a Drug-Resistant TB Program in Uganda
Uganda is one of the world’s 22 high burden countries for tuberculosis (TB). Despite having a national treatment program for drug-sensitive TB, there has been an emergence of drug-resistant strains of the disease, which are presenting a new and urgent threat to people’s health. So far in Uganda, 226 cases of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) have been confirmed, spread across 40 districts, but the true figure is likely to be much higher.
The best way to stop the disease from spreading is to start patients on treatment early. Aware of the urgency of the problem, the Ugandan government is taking steps to start treating DR-TB. Funding for DR-TB drugs is on its way, the drug order has been placed, and the government is planning a 40-bed ward for DR-TB patients in Mulago hospital in Kampala.
MSF firmly believes that a feasible model of care already exists in the Ugandan context. Since 2009, MSF has been running a community-based and comprehensive TB treatment program in Kitgum, in northern Uganda, hand in hand with the Ministry of Health.
Photo: Uganda 2011 © Andrea Stultiens
MDR-TB patient Oyella Mercy’s family in Kitgum