Posts tagged illness

Photo by Juan Carlos Tomasi/MSF

Roughly one in 10 people in Central African Republic (CAR) have been driven from their homes by violence that has overwhelmed the country since a coup in March 2013. “We are extremely concerned about the living conditions of the displaced,” said Sylvain Groulx, MSF head of mission in CAR, “who are overcrowded in churches, mosques, or schools, or living in the bush with no access to health care, food, or water, and are threatened by epidemics. Much more needs to be done and it needs to be done now.”

Photo by Juan Carlos Tomasi/MSF

Years of political and military instability in CAR have left the country in a chronic state of humanitarian crisis, particularly as it pertains to public health. The Ministry of Health has almost no presence outside of Bangui, the capital. There is just one doctor per 55,000 people and one nurse or midwife per 7,000 residents, according the United Nations, and most of those are in the capital. Read more: http://bit.ly/1exTtTP

Photo by Wendy Marijnissen

5-year-old Umeda is undergoing arduous treatment for drug-resistant TB in Tajikistan. She gets a gold star every day when she takes her medicine. http://bit.ly/1dq2zSb

An Escalating Health Crisis in South Sudan

MSF nurse Ghandi Bant escorts a patient with a possible case of appendicitis to a waiting ambulance in Doro camp. Violence forced many of the refugees in the camps to leave their homes in Sudan suddenly, and the difficult journey across the border exacerbated many pre-existing illnesses.

Since November 2011, MSF has been operating emergency programs in South Sudan for tens of thousands of refugees who fled violence in Sudan’s South Kordofan and Blue Nile States. MSF has field hospitals in five refugee camps in Unity and Upper Nile states in South Sudan (Batil, Doro, Jamam, Yida, and Gendrassa). However, resources in the camps are stretched extremely thin, and the humanitarian crisis is only worsening as more refugees arrive. Heavy rains have exacerbated the situation, flooding camps and leaving refugees—many of whom have already endured the journey from Sudan on foot—vulnerable to diseases like diarrhea, malaria, and cholera.

Photo: South Sudan 2012 © Nichole Sobecki