Posts tagged hope
We advocate for our patients and do everything that we can within our hospital to provide the best standard of care, but it can be quite overwhelming at times when what happens outside of our fences is completely beyond your control.
One of the things I do in these moments to help keep things in perspective, is to take a few moments to walk around the health facilities we have here. I remind myself to focus on all the things that we CAN actually do, and that do make a huge difference.
It is amazing how much is still able to be done right here in our hospital, even with all the constraints on time, resources and people power. At these short stitches in time I just marvel at all the activities that are happening simultaneously at any one moment: you can walk past the ER where people are resuscitated and brought back to life with emergency treatments, then past the out-patient clinics and see patients receiving life-changing mental health counseling and support for the terrible traumas they have endured.
You can stop in at the training tent and see a new generation of dedicated nurses and clinical officers participating so attentively in learning sessions to improve their clinical skills and knowledge, wanting to provide the best standard of care to their patients.
Dr. Saschveen blogs from Tanzania: http://blogs.msf.org/en/staff/blogs/msf-in-tanzania/treating-refugees-in-tanzania-perspective
Witnessing the resilience of kids after fleeing their homes and communities
In May 2016, Dutch photographer Ton Koene traveled to Iraq to chronicle the daily lives of tens of thousands of internally displaced populations (IDPs) and returnees who have lost loved ones and belongings amid the raging battles in the country.
Doctors Without Borders provides mental health care, a non-communicable disease clinic, health promotions and community engagement activities within Khanaqin-Alwand camp in the central north of Iraq.
In 16 months of search and rescue on the Mediterranean, we’ve met nearly 30,000 of the most hopeful & resilient people.
Meet Michael and Rachel, 21 and 22 years old from Nigeria.
Rachel: “I was pregnant when I left Nigeria, counting up to 8 months when I left. I gave birth in Libya, Sabha precisely. I don’t have money to go to the hospital. But thanks god I delivered successfully. And my baby now is 4 months old. Yesterday we came to Italy, today makes him 4 months and 8 days. And the travel from Libya to Italy, and the sea movement, it wasn’t easy. It’s not easy for us to come but thank God we got on our journey.
Each time I think about this whole journey… Libya, Nigeria… Even crossing the sea. It’s not easy, I cry all the time. We really passed through pain. The pain was too much for us. It was too much to be there.”
June 8th was an intense day for Doctors Without Borders’ search and rescue operations in the Central Mediterranean Sea. The MSF ship Bourbon Argos, that set sail from Zarzis in Tunisia, rescued 362 people from three boats in distress: 134 in the first one, 113 in the second and 115 in the third. On the three rubber rafts, the majority were from Nigeria, Guinea, Mali, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Togo and Senegal. Between the three boats, 57 women were rescued as well as 2 children.
Mother, Medical Director, Refugee- Doc Nagham in Amman
Leyan, 19, studying oral medicine, trained professional Dabkah dancer - a traditional Palestinian dance. “It is one of my dreams to become a dentist. I want to help my people and I hope to take up an important role in society.”
After several weeks of being sick and missing school, 15-year-old Naina in India waits excitedly with her mother to receive the intravenous infusion at MSF-run Kala Azar ward. She returned home a few hours later.
Irene. a medical coordinator with MSF says goodbye to refugees and migrants as they disembark the Bourbon Argos search and rescue ship.
Celebrate International Women’s Day - and shoutout to our amazing female patients and staff who continue to show immense strength and inspire us all!
“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
Awe-inspiring sight on the Greek island of Lesbos! What to do with 3,000 discarded lifejackets? Create a symbol to call for #safepassage
MSF teams and Greenpeace were joined by groups such as Sea-Watch, the Dutch Refugee Boat Foundation and local communities to make this sign. These volunteers help thousands of refugees fleeing oppression, violence, and poverty. http://bit.ly/1mIKrfu
MSF Ends Search and Rescue Operations in Central Mediterranean
“While we remain absolutely convinced of the importance of dedicated search and rescue in saving lives, we are doctors and search and rescue shouldn’t be our job. We very much hope that European resources will be sufficient in 2016 and that our boats will not be required.” - Stefano Argenziano, MSF’s manager of migration operations
“Being a humanitarian is much more than just giving people medicine. It’s recognizing everybody as an individual with a story, with a life, with a right to a future,” says Madeline Habib, the captain of Dignity 1, an MSF rescue ship in the Mediterranean http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/article/dignity-mediterranean
Hope For War-Wounded Patients Needing Reconstructive Surgery
“This hospital has become a second home for me; I’ve made more friends here from the other patients than I have in Iraq. We get to watch football matches on TV. I support Real Madrid and I will always do so” - 15 year old Ahmad was injured when an ambushed car a few meters from his school building exploded.
Accepting this would, for me at least, be paramount to giving up hope – laying down and accepting that these tiny little humans are not entitled to a life. MSF reject this. Where there is no hope, they create it. Sometimes it is not cheap to do, and just occasionally the main result is the creation of hope rather than its fulfilment. What value you give to hope itself… well, I suppose that is subjective. I don’t know what our hypothetical shopkeeper would charge for it, even in festival season. The more I see, the more I believe it is priceless.