Chad

Violent clashes in Sudan's Darfur region have driven tens of thousands of people across the border into Chad, where a lack of food, water, shelter, and basic services is developing into a humanitarian crisis.

An additional 10,000 refugees fleeing violence in Sudan have arrived in Chad's already-crowded Tissi area.

MSF doctor Kalyani Gomathinayagam discusses the situation in Biltine, Chad, where MSF is working to nurse acutely malnourished children back to health.

The harvest is almost in, but MSF continues to admit new patients to its emergency feeding program in eastern Chad.

Dr. Estrella Lasry reflects on a new strategy for treating malaria, a disease that kills hundreds of thousands of people every year.

A large-scale malaria prevention program appears to be drastically reducing the number of new cases of the disease among young children during peak transmission season.

MSF nutrition experts Susan Shepherd and Stéphane Doyon discuss the need for long-term solutions to malnutrition in Africa's Sahel region. 

Emma Augustine Zoba, an MSF medical team leader in Chad, discusses the growing malnutrition crisis in the country and MSF's widening response efforts.

As a food crisis spreads and malnutrition levels continue to rise, MSF is expanding the number of emergency malnutrition treatment programs it is operating in the country. 

Trained with the aid of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Dr. Valentin Vadandi is one of the few experts in obstetric fistula surgery in the world.

Food and water shortages in Chad are exacerbating malnutrition and contributing to the spread of deadly diseases like measles and meningitis.

This update details MSF's recent activities in Africa's Sahel region, where widespread malnutrition and water shortages are exacerbating the outbreaks of diseases like meningitis.

Severe acute malnutrition in parts of Chad has reached emergency levels, requiring immediate life-saving interventions.

In December 2011, MSF nurse Marja Scholten coordinated a vaccination campaign in the African country of Chad to prevent meningitis.

The cholera epidemic that struck Chad in 2011 was the largest in the last 15 years. MSF responded by treating more than 12,700 patients, or around 75 percent of all cases reported in the country.

Not long ago, it was tempting to think the battle against measles was being won. Stepped-up vaccination campaigns had driven the number of reported cases down to 32,000 in 2007, according to the World Health Organization, the lowest ever recorded. Over the past three years, however, there has been a resurgence.

As the Measles Initiative meets in Washington, D.C., MSF is calling for an effective outbreak response mechanism to be established immediately to deal with the rising numbers of severe outbreaks worldwide. 

Obstetric fistulas are one of the most serious consequences of obstructed labor. An estimated 2 million women in developing countries are living with fistulas, many on the margins of society.

Nearly 5,000 cases of cholera have been registered in Chad since an outbreak hit the country in August.

Instead of reviving the dry landscape and arid fields, torrential rains washed away many of the newly planted crops in parts of Chad.

MSF has set up treatment centers in response to cholera outbreaks in Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria.

Intense floods have hit parts of Chad, a country already enduring a severe malnuturition crisis.

Geneva/New York, June 14, 2010 – People living in the Sahelian belt of Chad are facing one of the worst nutrition crises in recent years. The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is calling for a faster and larger deployment of humanitarian assistance to meet the needs of the most vulnerable populations, particularly children under the age of five.

The food situation is serious throughout the Chadian Sahel strip as a result of two years of drought, swarms of locusts, a lack of drinking water and no access to care.

A Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staff member, who went missing following an armed robbery at the MSF compound in Adé in the east of Chad, has been safely released.  The international staff member was set free unharmed following 29 days in captivity at an unknown location, held by an unidentified armed group.

Since I started with MSF, women’s reproductive health programs have grown in priority. This makes sense in light of high maternal mortality rates in the contexts where MSF works. With much more information and evidence available, I think we are doing a better job of providing “best practices” within our projects.

During the last four months, MSF teams in cooperation with the national health officials have been moving quickly, following the epidemic trend, to help treat tens of thousands of patients and to proceed swiftly on a massive vaccination campaign for 7.5 million people.

More than 1,900 people affected by meningitis have died since the beginning of this year in an area of sub-Saharan Africa known as the meningitis belt. In Nigeria, Niger and Chad alone, MSF medical teams have treated more than 56,000 sick patients. The organization is currently vaccinating a total population of more than seven million in the three countries, the biggest vaccination campaign MSF has ever carried out.

Several countries in West Africa are facing a major meningitis epidemic. In Nigeria, this is the worst meningitis epidemic the country has experienced since 1996.

Following an outbreak in eastern Chad, MSF is currently vaccinating children between six months and 15 years against measles. As a nurse, Lenny Krommenhoek was part of this vaccination team for five weeks. Following her recent return, she wrote about the enormous logistical challenges she faced during her mission and her very personal experience in this remote part of the world.

On February 18, 2009, MSF started a massive measles vaccination campaign in the district of Adré in Eastern Chad, along the Sudan border. MSF teams have up to today vaccinated 19,000 children against measles.

MSF has mobilized significant human and logistical resources to fight an ongoing measles epidemic in the district of Abéché, Chad.

In 2007 a group of 11 women suffering from vesico-vaginal (VVF) fistulas approached MSF nurse Esther Moring and her medical team in eastern Chad, asking for treatment. In order to help those women and countless others with fistulas in eastern Chad, Moring and an MSF team initiated a pilot fistula surgery program. Here, Moring describes what fistulas are and why starting this project was so important.

This weekend, two Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) health facilities in Adé and Goz Beïda in eastern Chad were robbed by armed men. MSF teams have been evacuated and the project activities at these locations have been suspended indefinitely, leaving 70,000 people without access to life-saving health services. The incidents this weekend, along with additional armed robberies on two other NGOs, and  the hijacking of a UN vehicle, mark a peak in the number of attacks against humanitarian organizations over the last six months. MSF will review how it will be possible to return to full operations in eastern Chad.

In a new report launched today, MSF said many more lives can be saved if newer effective strategies to tackle malaria are more widely implemented. The report, titled "Full Prescription; better malaria treatment for more people, MSF’s experience,"describes the organization’s work in Sierra Leone, Chad and Mali, and shows that unnecessary deaths can be avoided with simple, affordable treatment and diagnostic tools available today.

On Sunday, August 3, three children from an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp were severely wounded by an unexploded ordnance device (UXO) they found near an airstrip in Gozbeida, Chad. All three children were brought to the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital, where they are now stable and remain under MSF care.

The conflict that began five years ago as a battle between Sudan’s government and two Darfuri rebel groups has developed into a far more complex disaster. While the large-scale, destructive attacks that marked the first few years of fighting are no longer frequent, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) sees a different kind of emergency developing. Continue Reading »

Interactive

DARFUR EMERGENCY TIMELINE

Explore MSF's response to the conflict in Darfur from 2003 to August 2008 through photos and links to MSF stories.

In mid-June, a fresh flare-up of armed conflict between government and rebel forces affected several villages and towns along Chad's eastern border region. MSF teams responded in several areas by providing emergency medical aid to the wounded.

On Saturday, June 14, fighting erupted in and around Goz Beida, a small town in eastern Chad, where a team is based to provide assistance to about 10,000 displaced people in nearby Gassire camp. MSF Head of Mission Karline Klejer describes what happened.

Photojournalist Spencer Platt traveled to Central African Republic in December 2007 to photograph MSF’s activities there.

During the week of January 27, reports surfaced of rebel forces advancing on the Chadian capital, N’Djamena, to oust the president. In preparation, MSF quickly transferred its surgical staff.

In February, bombings and attacks on villages in parts of West Darfur, Sudan, led to an influx of thousands of refugees into the Birak region of eastern Chad. MSF teams have been providing assistance by distributing essential relief items to the refugees and administering nutrient-fortified, ready-to-use foods (RUF) to prevent and treat malnutrition. As a new wave of refugees arrives in Birak from the Jebel Moon region in Darfur, MSF is distributing an additional round of relief items, setting up mobile medical clinics, and organizing a measles vaccination campaign alongside another distribution of RUF.

Stuck in a highly volatile security context, Sudanese refugees who have recently arrived just over the border in Birak, Chad, are in an extremely worrying situation. With ongoing combat a few kilometers away from their settlement, the lives of the refugees and those who remain in targeted areas in Darfur, are still at risk.

While many people have already returned to N'Djamena, further aid is reaching the thousands of refugees that still remain in the border town of Kousseri, in Cameroon. This week, MSF carried out a measles vaccination campaign and distributed relief items to thousands of people at two sites. MSF continues to offer free medical care to refugees and two surgical teams are still working in Kousseri and N'Djamena.

One week after the fighting ended, things are slowly getting back to normal in N'Djamena. The streets are starting to fill again, even if many shops in the town center remain closed. In the hospitals too, the worst of the crisis has passed. While a good number of people have returned to N'Djamena, thousands of families do not yet dare to go home, and continue to survive in precarious conditions across the border in Cameroon.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) continues to provide medical assistance to civilians affected by recent fighting in N'Djamena, Chad's capital city, as well as to refugees who have fled the combat to Cameroon, and displaced populations in the east of the country.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) continues to provide medical assistance to civilians affected by recent fighting in N'Djamena, Chad's capital city, as well as refugees who have fled the combat to Cameroon, and displaced populations in the east of the country.

MSF treated 70 wounded in N'Djamena, the Chad capital, over the weekend, but many hundreds of other wounded are reported to be in other hospitals in the city. Over the weekend, access to hospitals was limited due to the ongoing fighting. MSF has been unable to access the other hospitals as the roads are blocked by the masses of people fleeing from the city.

New York, June 8, 2007 – While Darfur remains the focus of intense political discussions surrounding the establishment of humanitarian corridors from Chad–of little relation to the reality on the ground—150,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) are caught up in a growing humanitarian crisis in Chad itself, the medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said today. Although a recent MSF survey has confirmed an emergency situation, assistance is still largely insufficient and MSF is confronting numerous obstacles to increasing its activities inside Chad.

The conflict under way in the Dar Sila region of Chad has forced more than 150,000 people to flee their villages. Displaced persons are living under extremely precarious conditions, and the risk of an acute emergency developing in the coming months is high.

New York/Berlin, March 3, 2007 — As the international humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) continues to provide medical care, drinking water, and relief goods to over 60,000 displaced persons in southeastern Chad, it urges other aid agencies to do more.

Since early 2006, attacks on civilians in southeastern Chad have resulted in the displacement of more than 100,000 Chadians. About 40,000 of them fled their homes in November and December alone when violence peaked.

On the morning of Thursday, February 1, a rebel group attacked the city of Adré, in eastern Chad, near the Sudan border. Many people were wounded during the confrontations with the government army and were treated by a surgical team of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) at the Adré hospital.

A plough lies in the shade of the straw hut and is a reminder of the time when M. Abdulai was still a farmer. Agriculture didn't make him rich. Everything that is harvested in Chad's dry south-eastern region is stored in large clay pots and has to suffice for the rest of the year. But at least Abdulai could still feed his family of 13.

The team has just brought Yakoub in by car to the small hospital set up by MSF at Dogdoré, a village of 3,000 inhabitants less than 30 km from the Sudanese border. It was the technician working at the pumping station set up by MSF in the nearby wadi—river—who drew attention to the incident. "Assailants arrived and hit the old man several times while he was working in his field," says Ousmane. "This morning, we heard that they had also kidnapped seven young girls near the river. They came back in the evening and set about the old man."

One Saturday morning, Ibrahim arrives at the MSF hospital at Dogdoré, just over thirty kilometers from the Sudanese border, with a bullet wound in his shoulder. The medical team give him the necessary treatment, dressing the wound and putting his arm in a sling, and Ibrahim explains that he has come from the village of Angoussa, which was attacked by armed men the previous day. He is worried, not about himself, but about his brother, who is seriously wounded and could not make it as far as Dogdoré.

The UN and main international aid organizations have drastically reduced their programs in eastern Chad. It is the Sudanese refugees from Darfur who will suffer from this decision, as well as the internally displaced Chadians who have fled the violence of various armed groups. Despite difficult security conditions, MSF is maintaining its assistance programs.

Internally displaced Chadians who have benefited from only minimal assistance now face even fewer opportunities to obtain aid. Despite the difficult security conditions, MSF is strengthening its aid program throughout eastern Chad on behalf of refugees, residents and displaced persons.

As humanitarian organizations pull out, MSF is worried about the people who need assistance in Chad

MSF is concerned about the fate of 5,000 displaced Chadians who fled an attack on the Koloye site, in the eastern part of the country, and have disappeared in the area even as violence expands in the region. That number included 37 Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) employees.

A new wave of violence has hit civilians in remote eastern Chad not far from its increasingly tense border with Sudan's Darfur region. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams in the regional town of Goz Beida are seeing several thousands of displaced people arriving from villages further south.

Paris, November 17, 2006 — MSF concerned about the fate of 5,000 displaced persons and 37 staff members who are missing as violence intensifies and spreads throughout the region.

West Darfur, Sudan/New York, June 16, 2006 – More than 10,000 people have fled violence in southeastern Chad and have crossed the border to take refuge in Darfur, Sudan, according to the international humanitarian aid agency Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

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.

Since late January, people have been streaming from Chad into Sudan's western region of Darfur, which is still gripped by violence and instability. More than 7,000 people fleeing violence and looting in Chad have taken refuge in a small village north of El Geneina, the capital of western Darfur. In this area neglected by aid organizations, MSF is providing them with assistance.

The region to the east of Chad–on the border with Sudan–is undergoing a period of sustained instability. In December, clashes between government forces and Chadian rebel groups broke out in and around the city of Adre. Since then regular attacks by the Chad rebels or armed fighters have targeted villages on both sides.

After having vaccinated more than 40,000 children in the Bousso district, 186 miles south of N'Djamena, MSF medical teams have now joined their colleagues in the capital of Chad.

April 28, 2005, N’Djamena/New York - A measles epidemic has hit at least three provinces in Southern and Eastern Chad, as well as the capital, N’Djamena. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has started to provide emergency assistance by treating patients with measles, continuing assessments, and carrying out vaccination campaigns.

Abeche, Chad, 28 January 2005 - The international medical humanitarian aid organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is launching a meningitis vaccination campaign in eastern Chad, following a recent outbreak among refugees from Sudan's Darfur region. The campaign is aimed at protecting thousands of people in the area from the highly infectious disease, which is particularly threatening in the overcrowded camps.

For several weeks, Dr. Kai Braker was the medical coordinator for the two camps in Forchana and Breidjing. He speaks about the after-effects of displacement and the wounds that will not heal.

The cholera epidemic that emerged around mid-June in Chad is still raging, with more than 2,000 people infected, including 100 deaths.

New York/Ndjamena, May 11, 2004 - Hunger and disease are severely endangering the lives of tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees in Chad, according to the international medical aid organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today. Malnutrition is rising, camps are overcrowded, food and water are scarce, and many people remain at risk from violent cross-border attacks by Sudanese militia. The refugees have fled extreme violence and massacres in the Darfur region of western Sudan, where a massive mobilization of humanitarian aid is also urgently needed.

Tine, Chad, January 29, 2004 - Civilians were killed and injured today when bombs hit the town of Tine, Chad, on the border with Sudan. According to volunteers working in Tine for the international medical aid organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the aerial bombardment, carried out by Sudanese planes, occurred at 8 am local time.