Ethiopia

  A new, ten-year, multi-billion dollar action plan for global vaccination may fail to deliver if it does not directly address the weaknesses in routine immunisation programmes. Nineteen million children are being missed each year and this challenge must be explicitly addressed, the medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said today.   Afghanistan: A young child receives a vaccination against Diphtheria, Tetanus and Polio. Photo: Ton Kuene   A ‘Global Vaccines Action Plan’ has been designed to implement the ‘Decade of Vaccines’ project and will be considered by Health Ministers gathering next week in...

Unless the capacity to deliver aid is rapidly increased, there will be significant problems in meeting the needs of Somalis fleeing to Ethiopia, the international medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders, MSF) said today... “At the moment, the capacity to receive more people and provide the necessary food, nutritional care, medical care, drinking water, sanitation and more is grossly insufficient,” said Wojciech Asztabski, MSF Project Coordinator for the Dollo Ado intervention... Read full article.

Dr Yashoda Manickchund (28) hails from Durban. She recently returned from Ethiopia where she participated in a month-long assessment where MSF intends setting up a nutrition programme. She has completed 3 other missions with MSF in Pakistan, Iraq and Libya. Here she explains more about her work:   Dr Yashoda Manickchund with a patient. Photo: MSF “While most of the world’s attention has been focussed on the nutrition crisis in Somalia, parts of Ethiopia are also facing severe drought. In Arsi zone in central Ethiopia, for example, the rains failed last year, which meant crop failures and dying livestock a year on. Signs of food insecurity were starting to appear and MSF had decided 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...