12 December 2012
New diagnostics and treatment offer new hope for sleeping sickness  National control activities crippled by lack of sustainable fundingA local health worker checks a young boy for signs of sleeping sickness in Mboki, Central African Republic. Sleeping sickness, or human African trypanosomiasis (HAT), is a fatal and much neglected disease that plagues parts of Africa. Over 13 days an MSF Mobile HAT team screened 4,548 people for the disease, and four people received treatment.  Photo:Sebastian Bolesch GENEVA/ KINSHASA - December 6, 2012 –Advances in the development of new diagnostic tests and treatment bode well for the fight against human African trypanosomiasis (HAT), however, national control activities on the ground are crippled by a lack of sustainable funding, warns medical...
16 October 2012
 Click on the photo above to see the slideshowSouth Sudan. MSF doctor checking the heartrate of a child in intensive care. Photo: Olga OverbeekMore than 170,000 refugees have crossed from South Kordofan and Blue Nile states in Sudan, and are gathered in five camps in remote and inaccessible areas of South Sudan. Many of the refugees arrived in a very weak condition after weeks of walking, and the health situation in the camps has varied from bad to disastrous in the past months. In Batil camp, in South Sudan’s Upper Nile State, mortality was more than double the emergency threshold, according to MSF data from July. Up to half of children under two years old in the camp were malnourished, and MSF declared the health situation...
01 October 2012
Escalating violence has forced international medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) to suspend medical services in two out of three of its facilities in Pibor county in Jonglei state, South Sudan, leaving up to 90,000 people deprived of essential medical care.  February 2012. Photo: Robin Meldrum/MSFDue to the insecurity, the populations of Lekwongole and Gumuruk, including all MSF staff and their families, have fled their homes to seek refuge in the bush. Without staff and unable to reach the two towns from Pibor, MSF has been forced to suspend its medical activities on 25 August in Lekwongole and 20 September in Gumuruk.MSF has evacuated all international staff from Pibor county...
21 September 2012
Sudanese refugees in Bambasi, EthiopiaMore than 2,000 white tents line the green hills near the village of Bambasi, in western Ethiopia. Since July, they have been home to 12,000 Sudanese refugees who fled their homeland and are now taking sanctuary from conflict in a camp established by the Ethiopian authorities and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Sudanese refugees in Bambasi, Ethiopia. Photo: Yann Libessart/MSF“I left Sudan with my husband and our eight children last year when the war reached our village Qeissan,” says a woman named Jamila, 30. “The Sudanese air force bombed us before troops attacked on the ground. Many people, including my older brother, were massacred. “The comprehensive peace agreement signed in January 2005 between the...
21 September 2012
malnutrition, civil war, diarrhoea,Cracked skin from the swelling that comes with severe malnutrition covers most of his small, fragile body... “He was eating, and then he began to grow a big stomach and get diarrhoea,” said his father Kamal Abulila, who was watching over his sickly son in the clinic run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF)…MSF Emergency Co-ordinator Foura Sassou said the main problems in the camp were now diarrhoea and malaria...   Read article here. 
21 September 2012
Humanitaria, malaria, diarrhoea,refugee Humanitarian workers warn the influx could become a catastrophe. As many as 15 000 more refugees could stream across the border from Sudan by the end of the year... According to MSF, around two people per every 10 000 in the camp were dying each day, double what the organisation considers the emergency threshold. Around 25% of those admitted to the MSF hospital in Yida were dying. Many were acutely malnourished, and the rains brought malaria and diarrhoea...   Read article here. 
19 September 2012
South Sudan, diarrhoea, malaria, war diseases Conditions in this malaria-infested and swampy land are grim, a perfect breeding ground for the clouds of flies that descend constantly on weakened children. Around 62 000 people are now crammed into Yida in Unity state, fleeing bombs and hunger in Sudan’s former bread-basket state, where Khartoum has been battling rebels for over a year, as well as in Blue Nile state, according to the UN...MSF emergency co-ordinator Foura Sassou said the main problem in the camp was now diarrhoea and malaria which “make people malnourished, especially the children”...In nearby beds, already tiny babies with wrinkled skin and hands – wrapped in bandages to stop them pulling out feeding tubes – look enormous in foil sheets covering them to help bring...
18 September 2012
a month in focus    Syria – An undercover hospitalSouth Sudan – An improved situation in YidaEthiopia – Sudanese refugees displacedGuinea & Sierra Leone – “Coastal Cholera”Uganda – Containing EbolaPhilippines – Torrential rains
24 August 2012
MSF, refugees, Batil, South Sudan, malnutrition, conflictThe perennial political wrangling in the Sudans is forcing tens of thousands of people from Sudan into South Sudan, fleeing from a nasty bombing campaign orchestrated by the regime in Khartoum. Africa’s newest country is helpless to deal with the refugee crisis, and international agencies can’t cope either... There are 170,000 people crammed into four emergency camps in South Sudan near the border with Sudan. More arrive every day. The camps were hastily-established to provide the most basic of facilities, and struggle to do even that due to the overwhelming numbers. .. The gravity of the situation was echoed by Helen Ottens-Patterson, MSF’s medical coordinator in the area. “I have never really seen this anywhere before and I have...