Doctors Without Borders

When Zahra brought her children, Kholah and Saher, to our Abs hospital in Yemen, they were suffering from dehydration and malnutrition.

Life in her village is hard, Zahra explains, with many supplies lacking: “It’s even hard to get them the milk they need. I spend many days looking for milk, worried and anxious.”

The ongoing civil war in Yemen has left the health system in shambles, and now many in rural areas are without access to medical care. With services disrupted, in recent months the country now faces a severe cholera outbreak that is affecting thousands. While successful treatment does exist—serious cases can improve within four days with rehydration therapy—without a reliable health infrastructure, many are in danger of falling ill beyond the reach of clean water and proper care.

Residents in the city of Taiz must risk their lives to seek medical care. The conflict, which has been active since March 2015, has included the bombing of hospitals, gunfire directed at ambulances, and the harassment of health workers. Today, there are no public hospitals in Taiz city or its surroundings that are fully open and functioning.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) works on both sides of the front lines in Taiz, running a trauma center for war-wounded and a mother and child hospital in the Al-Houban neighborhood. MSF also supports departments in four hospitals inside the city center, two of them for emergency treatment of the wounded and the others supporting maternal and pediatric health care.

Read Yemen: Health Care Under Siege at https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org

In the capital Bangui, over 30,000 people have taken refuge in overcrowded, unsanitary makeshift camps across town, or in schools or churches. To enable access to free quality health care for this vulnerable population, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is providing healthcare and running mobile clinics in five camps around Bangui. We also runs a hospital and a maternity clinic in Mpoko, and provide medical care once a week the central mosque in the Muslim enclave of PK5.

Photo by Anna Surinyach/MSF

Many migrants in Mexico travel on a cargo train, known as The Beast. They often suffer robberies and sustain injuries on the way.

Photo by Anna Surinyach/MSF

Rosa Inés Pisso is receiving mental health treatment in Colombia to work through the loss of her son in the country’s long-running conflict. She hopes to see him again. “The silence is what kills. At night, when I lie down, I think: “Where could he be sleeping?”

Photo by Julie Remy/MSF

An MSF counselor guides a young, traumatized Ukrainian girl through a mental health session as her mother looks on.

Photo by Samantha Maurin/MSF

Kelly Dilworth, MSF anesthetist, in the intensive care unit of the burnt service of Shifa hospital, Gaza City, where two brothers, 8 and 4 years old, are hospitalized after being severely burned when a missile fell on their house.

Photo by Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi

In a crowded reception room, patients wait for care at Nap Kenbe – Creole for ‘staying well’ – surgical center in Tabarre, eastern Port-au-Prince.

Photo by Phil Moore

Porters carry sacks containing vaccination equipment over a bridge of bamboo and vines between the villages of Kitobo and Katanga during an intense vaccination campaign in Masisi territory in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Photo by Noor Muhammad/MSF

Ahmed Lahi Daya is a 65-year-old farmer from Tipul Shah. He waits with other relatives outside of DHQ Hospital in Dera Murad Jamali for his grandson to be discharged.

“We are a family of farmers. We work the whole day, from dawn to dusk in order to earn a few rupees. We cut the crop of rice, we dry the crop, collect it and then separate the grain. Sometimes we get sick and we have to come to this hospital. We can’t afford to go to a private clinic. Since four or five years ago I am bringing my children here whenever they get sick, have diarrhea or vomiting. MSF doctors say my grandson Abdurraman is malnourished. He is eight months old and has been in the ward for the last five days. He has been given medicines and is now fine. He will be discharged soon. We have to wait outside. There is only space inside for the mother. I will sleep outside with a blanket, while waiting for them.”

Photo by Sa'adia Khan

One woman dies nearly every hour in Pakistan from complications of giving birth. The maternal mortality rate is even higher in Balochistan than the rest of the country. The largest but least populated province has some of the lowest national developmental indicators. A third of the women marry before reaching 15 and two thirds of them are illiterate. Only three out of ten pregnant women deliver their babies with skilled attendants present at the scene. And this can be fatal. MSF tries to mitigate this reality running maternal healthcare programmes in four projects in Baluchistan (Chaman, Quetta, Kuchlak and Dera Murad Jamali).

In Dera Murad Jamali, MSF provides comprehensive emergency obstetric care, neonatal and pediatric inpatient care, basic health care, and nutrition services at the District Headquarter Hospital. Here, women walk to the Ambulatory Therapeutic Feeding Center with their children.

Photo by Phil Moore

Mothers listen to Alpha Atafazali Bahunga telling them that they require three rounds of vaccination during a session in a church and school in the village of Kalungu II in Masisi territory in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo on August 14, 2014. Over the course of a week, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams trekked into remote parts of Masisi territory to vaccinate pregnant women and children under five years old.

Photo by Phil Moore

People shelter from the rain in the doorway of a church and school in the village of Kalungu II during a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) vaccination campaign in remote parts of Masisi territory in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo on August 13, 2014. The village is in the heart of territory controlled by an armed group.

Photo by Phil Moore

Porters carry cooling containers for live vaccines to keep live vaccines cold, out of the village of Kazinga during a vaccination campaign in Masisi territory in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo on August 11, 2014. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) conducted the campaign across territory controlled by armed groups, in villages accessible only by foot.

Photo by Phil Moore

Issa Chirihahira Nyamirenge followed by Justin Ndagijimana Ntimba, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) nurses, trek through thick bush between the villages of Ngomashi and Kazinga at the end of an intense vaccination campaign in Masisi territory in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo on August 15, 2014.

Posts tagged healthcare