Nigeria: A New MSF Emergency Project in Maiduguri

Adavize BAIYE/MSF

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has been working at Umaru Shehu Hospital in Maiduguri, the capital of Nigeria’s Borno State, since September 28. The hospital, which treats patients referred from smaller health facilities, also provides care to people wounded during attacks.

At the hospital, an MSF doctor and nurse provide support and relief to Ministry of Health teams working night and day in the 11-bed emergency room. Between September 28 and October 3, 134 patients were admitted to the department for emergency medical and surgical care.

On October 1, MSF staff and the hospital’s teams treated 20 patients (including six children and 11 women) wounded during yet another wave of Boko Haram suicide bombings in Maiduguri. Three were in critical condition and, regrettably, one has died. The other patients are either still in the hospital in stable condition or have been discharged.

Resuscitation kits and essential medicines donated by MSF are already in use, and the operating theater has been refitted and equipped with supplies. A mass casualty plan has been prepared, and the nurses and doctors who recently joined the team have been trained on how to implement it; other MSF staff and hospital employees will also receive training. Emergency medicines, notably pediatric and gynecological, will also be provided, and the emergency department building and equipment are to be refurbished and restructured.

MSF has been providing assistance to people displaced by the conflict in northeast Nigeria since May 2014. The project in Umaru Shehu Hospital is the latest addition to operations in the Maiduguri area, where MSF teams also run two clinics in urban districts in Maimusari and Bolori, work in several of the towns’ displaced persons camps, and respond to emergencies such as the recent cholera epidemic.

Health workers examine a young patient at MSF's Bolori health center.
Adavize BAIYE/MSF