Surgery

On August 19, two attacks in Baghdad killed 95 people and wounded nearly 600. These two particularly deadly attacks were a startling reminder of the violence borne by the Iraqi people since the start of the war.

Seven weeks after fighting ended between the Sri Lankan army and the Tamil Tiger rebels, fewer patients are arriving at the hospitals, but their numbers still exceed bed capacity.

MSF, Ministry of Health doctors and nurses, and Red Cross Society volunteers quietly move from patient to patient housed under six temporary structures. Most of the patients have several dressings that need to be changed regularly. In a small room in the hospital, MSF surgeons and anesthetists carry out surgical procedures such as skin grafts and wound closures.

Despite ongoing conflict that has made it difficult for humanitarian organizations to be in Iraq, since 2006 Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has set up medical projects for populations in Anbar, Tameen, Ninewa, Sulemaniya, Baghdad, and Basra. MSF also runs a project in Jordan for Iraqi war wounded. Khalil Sayyad recently returned from Basra, southern Iraq, where he worked as Field Coordinator for nine months. He was part of MSF's first international team to establish a presence in Iraq since 2004, when high insecurity led MSF to leave country.

During the first two weeks of March, relatively few people seem to have been able to flee from the conflict-affected Vanni area in northern Sri Lanka. Communication with people inside the Vanni remains incredibly difficult, but accounts given by people who have managed to escape in recent days confirm that civilians remain trapped by the conflict and that it is practically impossible for them to leave as they risk being shot at.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has been equipped for more than three years with inflatable tents enabling rapidly and adaptable set-ups of operating suites, intensive care units, and hospital beds. Injured patients in Gaza City who require specialized or follow-up surgical procedures are admitted to such a temporary hospital. Dr. Mego Terzian, MSF deputy coordinator for emergency programs explains more.

MSF medical teams began carrying out specialized surgical procedures today in inflatable structures put up by MSF late last week in Gaza City. The two hospital tents include operating theaters and a 12-bed, post-surgery recovery and post-operative care unit.

An MSF surgical team and other personnel entered the Gaza Strip today to provide essential surgical services to people seriously wounded during the last three weeks of intense fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) opened its project in Jordan on August 5. Head of mission Dr. Mego Terzian explains the goals of the project in Amman and describes the main difficulties encountered by the team and our partners in Iraq.

Dr. Nikki Blackwell, an anesthesiologist on the Amman program, explains the specific features of this surgical project, describing the difficulties involved as well as the new techniques employed and her initial grounds for satisfaction.

Nasir is 37 years old. He lives with his wife and six children in the district of Babylone south of Baghdad. He earns a living doing odd jobs. In January he found himself standing five meters from two people who blew themselves up in a market. Six months later, Nasir has undergone reconstructive surgery in Amman.

N'Djamena/Brussels, April 14, 2006 – Since yesterday afternoon, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has been treating heavily wounded civilians after widespread violence in Chad reached the capital city, N'Djamena. So far, surgical teams have supported the treatment of more than 60 people in the Hopital General de Reference National (HGNR), the main reference hospital in the country.

Courtland Lewis, MD, an orthopedic surgeon from the University of Connecticut, spent three weeks in Mansehra, Pakistan, where he worked in the MSF field hospital, which is composed of nine inflatable tents.

Kampala, New York December 12, 2005 — Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Interplast Holland have begun a reconstructive surgery program for civilians mutilated in the course of the conflict in northern Uganda. Many villagers have had lips, ears, noses or fingers cut off as part of the extensive violence directed at civilians in the region in recent years.

Until August 2005, 30-year old Renilde Kanyange was the supervising operating nurse for MSF's program providing emergency surgical care in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. Originally from Bujumbura, Burundi, she helped open the trauma center in December 2004.

Dr. Giovanni Brescia, an anaesthesiologist, is part of a Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) surgical team working in Lamno town, in Aceh province on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

Mary Ann Hopkins, MD, a surgeon at New York University Medical Center and Bellevue Hospital, recently returned from Bunia. At the 150-bed Bon Marché Hospital, Dr. Hopkins operated on people, including children, with gunshot, machete, and burn wounds as well as victims of sexual violence, who have been directly targeted by warring factions in Ituri.

Dr. Jean-Paul Dixmeras, a surgeon from Paris and a member of the Board of Directors for the French section of MSF, recently returned from providing emergency surgical care in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince.

A Doctors without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) surgical team has started working in Sigli General District Hospital. Sigli, the capital of Pidie district on the eastern coast of Aceh, is an area that has been severely damaged by the tsunami. The 35-bed hospital has remained open with the help of Indonesian staff (many of the employees of the hospital were killed).

Port-au-Prince / New York, February 13, 2004 - Today, the international medical aid organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is sending 16 tons of medical equipment to Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. The supplies consist primarily of surgical and dressing kits for the MSF programs in the hospital of Saint Nicolas, in Saint-Marc, and Saint François de Salle Hospital, in Port-au-Prince. The MSF medical emergency program aims to ensure access to treatment for the people wounded during the massive demonstrations and other violent incidents that have been occurring almost daily since December 2003.

MSF volunteer surgeon Bruce Frank, MD didn't really feel he was in a war-zone when he first arrived in Ivory Coast in mid-December.