Water and Sanitation

Overcrowding and poor living conditions in Iraq’s Domeez camp have led to a recent deterioration in the health of Syrian refugees.

With a hepatitis E epidemic escalating across refugee camps in South Sudan’s Maban County, MSF has treated 3,991 patients and recorded 88 deaths, including 15 pregnant women.

A live BBC report from the Batil refugee camp in South Sudan, featuring an interview with MSF staff on the ground.

Mortality rates are nearly double the emergency threshold in a refugee camp in South Sudan’s Upper Nile State.

"All these people in the camps are normal people who had normal lives. They’re not rich people, but they had houses and clothes, and then one day, they had to pack their things, leave their lives behind and start to walk. For weeks on end." 

Duncan McLean, MSF program manager for Somalia, talks about the difficulties of working in Somalia today.

“Last week’s decrease in cases is good news, but we can’t get complacent,” said MSF's head of mission. “The cholera epidemic in Haiti is far from over."

Among the large scope of MSF activities in Haiti, as of May 31, more than $14.6 million has been spent on surgical care for Haitians injured in the earthquake. At least $5.3 million was spent on maternal health services.

Six months after Haiti’s January 12 earthquake, MSF describes the organization’s largest ever emergency response.

There are few health care options for Somalis and very few international organizations present. Before MSF arrived in Jamaame, there were only traditional healers and shops that sold drugs.

Intense fighting among various armed groups claimed the lives of hundreds of civilians and displaced thousands more in Somalia in the first half of 2009. The town of Jamaame, in a remote area of southern Somalia’s Lower Juba region, is one area where MSF has been able to provide ongoing medical services.

Today I went to the third, and final, place where we are doing medical clinics, in the area of Dakshin Bedkashi. You really have to watch out for high tide, because you can only pass through certain places at low tide. Otherwise, where the pathway is broken, you have to go up to your chest through water with strong currents.

It is my third day here in Satkira District of Bangladesh. About six weeks ago, this place was inundated with water when Cyclone Aila hit and broke many levees in a region where people live at or below sea level. The result was much like Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

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.

Max Cosci, MSF head of mission in Haiti, describes the situation on the ground in Gonaïves after Haiti was hit by Hurricane Gustav, Tropical Storm Hanna, and Hurricane Ike.

Since the start of 2008, 767 people suffering from cholera have required treatment in a cholera treatment center (CTC) supported by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) the city of Lubumbashi, the capital of Katanga province and the economic center of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Luanda, Angola, May 17, 2006 – The disastrous state of the water supply and sanitation infrastructure in Luanda and other large cities is the principal reason for the rapid spread of cholera in Angola. As of May 14, more than 34,000 people have fallen ill with cholera (17,500 in Luanda alone) and over 1,200 have died. Though the Angolan authorities have taken some initiatives to limit the spread of the disease, the international humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) calls for a dramatically stepped up emergency intervention by the Government of Angola and international agencies.

"The only thing separating the displaced people from life-threatening dehydration was a three-and-half inch diameter, exposed pipe that was snaking through the jungle to the town." says Barry Gutwein, a water-and-sanitation engineer from Indiana, who was dispatched to Dubie, a town in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Katanga Province.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has chartered a landing craft to carry water bladders, piping, reservoirs, and distribution ramps to Lamno, on the west coast of Aceh.