Interviews

Lebanon: Healing those deeply affected   Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has been providing mental healthcare in two refugee camps in Lebanon for the past three years, both to Palestinian refugees and to vulnerable Lebanese in the area. Now MSF has opened a new project in northern Lebanon, following the arrival of 4,500 Syrians who have fled the unrest in their country. Bruno Jochum, General Director of MSF, is just back from the region.   Mahmoud Abou Hamdi, social worker at MSF going to visit a patient in Burj el-Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp in the suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon. Photo: Dina Debbas   Why is MSF working in Lebanon?  ...

  Refugees in Doro, South Sudan. © Jean-Marc Jacobs This 33-year-old man was interviewed in the Doro refugee camp in South Sudan on December 7, 2011. He was once a community health worker with an NGO in Blue Nile State, but has since spent 10 years in a refugee camp in Ethiopia during Sudan's civil war. He returned home in 2005, but has now been forced to register as a refugee once again. “The journey here was very hard for us. It was so far. For me and my family it took about one week and a half to come here to Doro. Our small children could not walk far. My wife and our 11-year-old each carried the twins, who are one year old, on their backs. I was carrying our...

In a move that could have a profound impact on patients in developing countries, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria has announced it won’t be accepting any grant applications this year to support treatment programmes because of a catastrophic drop in donor funding.  MSF international president, Dr Unni Karunakara The Global Fund, financed largely by governments, was set up ten years ago as a ‘war chest’ to fight the spiralling AIDS pandemic and tackle malaria and TB, the other two infectious diseases that claim millions of lives each year in developing countries. In many countries, MSF works alongside the national health authorities who rely on Global Fund support to...

In Liben, Southern Ethiopia, MSF is providing medical care in the six camps where 119,000 refugees are gathered. More than 10,000 children are enrolled in nutritional programmes. Karliene Kleijer, until recently MSF emergency project coordinator in Liben, Ethiopia. Photo: MSF Karliene Kleijer, MSF emergency field coordinator in Liben, spoke to us upon her return from the field. How was it to set up operations in southern Ethiopia (following the need for increased medical care after Somalis started fleeing massively to Ethiopia)? Humbling, it is very impressive to be confronted with the challenges the Somali population are facing. Talking to the mothers who are coming with their...