16 October 2012
About 200 000 deaths from malaria each year could be averted if African governments follow new World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines, soon to be released, and switch from the far less effective medication quinine to artesunate, according to Medecins Sans Frontieres / Doctors Without borders (MSF).
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20 September 2011
30 June 2011
Abdul. Photo: Eric Bouvet/ VII Network
Some 3,000 sub-Saharan Africans are stranded in camps at the Tunisian border with Libya. Most had fled violence or repression in their own countries in search of work in Libya. Due to the war, they had to flee. But due to the situations in their native countries, they cannot be repatriated, and are therefore stuck where they are, their futures uncertain.
Many had been detained while they were in Libya. Others have lost relatives—parents, husbands, wives, or children. Some were physically injured. Some have endured severe psychological trauma. And now tensions are building in Shousha, the unsurprising result of the collective circumstances of the...
20 May 2011
"We left the village on February 28,” Honorine says. The fighting in western Ivory Coast had drawn close to their home, near Toulepleu, and she and her family decided they had no other choice. “We spent two weeks in the brush and then walked for 10 days to get here, to Guiglo. We came with the entire family, 28 people."
Since arriving in Guiglo, Honorine has not left the displaced persons' camp, which sits behind the Notre-Dame de Nazareth church. Honorine’s parents, her children, even her sister-in-law and her seven-month-old twins, are sleeping outdoors. But for the time being, the family does not expect to return home any time soon. "If everything is OK, we'll go back," says Honorine....
13 May 2011
“During the crisis, there were only three of us midwives here in the Anyama hospital,” says Viviane recalling the fighting that raged in Abidjan from late February to April. “There were no doctors and no nurses. Only two nurse-trainees came during the day.”
Viviane and two colleagues took 48-hour shifts in order to assist women who managed to reach this hospital, located on the northern edge of Abidjan. Nearly all the health centres in this region of small villages had closed. Despite the midwives' tenacity and courage, many young mothers had to give birth at home because of the fighting and curfew that followed.
Viviane's work days are now returning to normal. A Médecins Sans Frontières/...
Abidjan - further medical needs
31 March 2011
Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) Surgeon Cristiana Bertocchi recently finished a short stint in Ivory Coast, during which she worked in the Abobo Sud neighborhood of Abidjan. The city is one of the main flashpoints in the widespread and worsening violence in the country. At present, the Ministry of Health hospital in Abobo Sud, where MSF is working, is the area’s only fully-functioning hospital and one of the few in the city. Medical teams there have treated 273 emergency patients over the past three weeks, 225 of whom had bullet wounds.
Abobo Sud hospital the day of the attack at the nearby market, when the facility was flooded with wounded people. Photo:...