Posts tagged south sudan

“Needless to say I have never seen it before, nor has my more experienced colleague.”

Dr. Shadi Abdelrahman is a young surgeon from Cairo. he just finished his first mission with MSF, in a hospital in Agok, Abyei, an area with special administrative status located between Sudan and South Sudan. Even though this was his first mission for MSF, it was not his first foray into field work. He talks about his experience of delivering a miraculous baby girl in his first-ever Caesarean section.

Read more here: http://blogs.msf.org/en/staff/blogs/a-surgeon-in-the-field/a-pleasant-surprise

Meet five-year-old Nya: she was playing with her eight-year-old sister near their home when shooting started. Sensing danger, her sister picked Nya up and together they ran to the bush. As they ran, Nya was hit by a stray bullet in her right arm. 

For two days she lay unconscious- when her grandma found her the arm was severely damaged and she had lost a lot of blood. Rushed to the local clinic and then airlifted to Juba, by the time she got to the MSF surgeon, the only thing that could be done to save her life was amputate her arm.

Nya is one of 201 patients who received surgery from Doctors Without Borders following the recent clashes in South Sudan, 54 of which were major operations.

MSF is running vaccination campaigns to protect almost 188,000 South Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia’s Gambella region against pneumonia and other vaccine-preventable diseases.

A key tool in fighting child mortality in emergencies is the pneumonia vaccine, but it’s priced out of the reach of many humanitarian organizations and developing countries.  Help us #AskPharma to lower the price of the pneumonia vaccine so all children get a fair shot. http://bit.ly/1I4Vt61

Photo by Karin Ekholm/MSF

An MSF outreach team informs refugees at Yida camp in South Sudan’s Unity State about the importance of having their children vaccinated against measles. MSF has been responding to an outbreak of the disease in the camp by providing treatment and vaccinations.

Photo by Karin Ekholm/MSF

MSF medical staff administer oral measles vaccine to children at Yida refugee camp in South Sudan’s Unity State. An outbreak of measles started in Yida camp in late November. In addition to treating sick children, MSF launched a vaccination campaign to increase immunization coverage to protect children from future outbreaks.

Photo by Michael Goldfarb/MSF

A stretcher looted from the  Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Leer, South Sudan, lies on the edge of the town’s former airstrip, marked by fresh tank tracks. "The conflict has at times seen horrific levels of violence, including against healthcare facilities,“ said Raphael Gorgeu, MSF head of mission. “Patients have been shot in their beds and lifesaving medical facilities have been burned and effectively destroyed. These attacks have far-reaching consequences for hundreds of thousands of people who are cut off from medical services.” MSF’s hospital in Leer was destroyed along with most of the town in late January and early February. In May, MSF resumed some activities as people started to return to Leer. Staff members treated more than 1,600 children for malnutrition in the first three weeks alone. However, MSF is unable to provide anything like its previous services, including routine vaccinations and emergency surgery.

Photo by Michael Goldfarb/MSF

The operating theater in  Doctors Without Borders’/Médecins Sans Frontières’ (MSF) hospital in the town of Leer in Unity State, South Sudan, was destroyed and ransacked.  Since armed conflict erupted in South Sudan in December, at least 58 people have been killed on hospital grounds, and hospitals have been ransacked or burned on at least six occasions. The hospital in Leer was the only facility providing secondary healthcare, including surgery and treatment for HIV and tuberculosis, in an area with approximately 270,000 people.

Photo by Michael Goldfarb/MSF

This is the burned front gate of the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in the town of Leer, South Sudan as of February 2014. The hospital was thoroughly looted, burned, ransacked, and effectively destroyed, along with most of Leer, sometime between the final days of January and early February 2014, leaving hundreds of thousands of people cut off from critical, lifesaving medical care. The hospital, opened by MSF 25 years ago, was the only secondary health care facility in Unity State, South Sudan. Hospitals have been ransacked in the towns of Bor, Malakal, Bentiu, Nasir and Leer, often during periods of heavy fighting. The damage goes far beyond the acts of violence themselves as vulnerable people are cut off from healthcare when they desperately need it.

Medical care has come under fire in South Sudan. Over 6 months, at least 58 people were killed on hospital grounds, including 25 patients and at least 2 Ministry of Health staff. Ambulances, medical equipment and hospitals were burned, looted, and destroyed. And hundreds of thousands of people have been cut off from health care. 

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 Phil Moore

A girl recovers in an MSF clinic after suffering an electric shock from an exposed wire in a refugee camp in Juba, South Sudan. Roughly 300 miles north of Juba, in Malakal, MSF was forced to suspend its medical activities last week after the MSF compound was looted. Thousands of people were left without medical care. Read more: http://bit.ly/1aohxdM

Photo by Jake Simkin

An MSF medical worker in Juba, South Sudan, treats an injured woman, one of the 40,000 people taking refuge from fighting in that area. Overall, MSF emergency teams are working in Juba, Awerial, and Malakal, providing medical care to more than 110,000 displaced people. Read more: http://bit.ly/1f8ZPga