Our teams provide medical care and assistance to displaced people and local communities, who often struggle with a lack of food, in the east and the south of the country.
We work to prevent or help mitigate the seasonal peaks of malnutrition and malaria among children, including across the Sahel region in Adre, on the border with Sudan, which is an area marked by violence and displacement.
We also improve healthcare for women and children and work on preventing and responding to measles outbreaks.
An emergency response unit (CERU) in southern Chad is capable of delivering medical care in under 72 hours. The CERU responds to emergencies, including measles outbreaks, influxes of refugees fleeing the Central African Republic, and intercommunal clashes.
Data and information from the International Activity Report 2023.
In the Ouaddaï region, where we were already working, our teams quickly scaled up activities to assist people displaced by the violence. We provided healthcare in several locations, including Adré, Goungour and Koufroun, and carried out measles vaccination campaigns with the Ministry of Health.
In June, more than 850 Sudanese with war wounds, mainly from bullets, were received in Adré hospital in just three days – one of the largest influxes of wounded patients that MSF has ever had to manage. As the surgical unit was overwhelmed, we quickly erected an inflatable 200-bed hospital.
In the same month, hundreds of thousands of people previously trapped in Sudan’s West Darfur state started to arrive in eastern Chad. This dramatically increased the need for healthcare, shelter, food, water, and sanitation in places with scarce resources. In response, we opened a clinic in Adré transit camp and expanded our emergency response in paediatrics, women’s health, emergency medicine, mental health support, and treatment for malnutrition and for victims of sexual violence in Adré and in the newly built camps in Arkoum, Ourang and Metché.
We supported the health centre, opened two health posts in Arkoum, and built a field hospital in Ourang. In Metché, we started to build another inpatient facility towards the end of the year. Our teams also distributed water and built latrines at all these sites.
Aside from our emergency assistance to refugees, another of our priorities in Chad in 2023 was to support vaccination campaigns and improve the routine vaccination programme. In January, in collaboration with the health authorities, we vaccinated hundreds of thousands of children against measles in an effort to curb the epidemic in the capital, N’Djamena. We also provided vaccinations in 15 nomad camps in the city, and further south, in Tandjile and Moyenne Chari regions. Following intercommunal clashes in the Logone Oriental region, we supported health facilities to treat the wounded and referred patients requiring surgical care to Moundou Hospital.
We continued to partner with the Ministry of Health to improve access to paediatric, obstetric, and maternal healthcare in Moissala and services for children, including treatment for malnutrition, in Massakory and N’Djamena. We have also helped to upgrade facilities in the capital by setting up a blood bank in Toukra hospital and constructing a new emergency room at Gozator hospital after the previous one was destroyed in a fire.
In addition, MSF is working to develop community-based healthcare to prevent and treat malaria and other common diseases, training staff, and supporting health centres and local health programmes in Massakory, Moissala and Sila.
I looked after her for seven days at home but after that knew I had to get her to a clinic.ZARA ABBA VISITED MSF INTENSIVE CARE UNIT IN BOKORO WITH HER GRANDDAUGHTER.
