One of the key issues that have yet to be resolved in the Iowa legislature this session is education reform. The House and Senate have passed dueling plans and the Governor says the Senate’s version is “watered down.” Join host Ben Kieffer as he’s joined by Governor Terry Branstad. We’ll ask him about education reform and about the debate over finely textured lean beef – or what critics are calling “pink slime.” Later, Ben talks with Elizabeth Wentzel, who after raising five children decided to chase her life-long dream to travel to a far away land to work and support others less fortunate. The Pilot Mound native is on a nine month assignment in the newly independent nation of South Sudan working as a nurse for Doctors Without Borders.
Kate Pittel always has had a passion for helping others and traveling the world. The Ferndale nurse found the perfect opportunity in the Doctors Without Borders program, where she volunteered for the organization’s fistula program in Nigeria.
Mary Jo Frawley, a registered nurse from Vermont, went to Haiti days after the earthquake in January 2010. She thought she’d stay a few weeks, but wound up staying for 14 months.
Doctors and other hospital staff in Libya are highly dedicated, but there is a lack of inpatient capacity in all areas of care. MSF is helping to fill the gaps in surgery, obstetrics, and neonatal care.
Nenna Arnold, a community outreach nurse at the Dagahaley refugee camp in northeastern Kenya, cares for Somali refugees fleeing violence, insecurity, and a devastating drough.
Hannah Megacz, a New York City-based nurse, has worked with MSF in Cameroon, Niger, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and, for much of 2010, in Dadaab, Kenya, in the Dagahaley Refugee Camp, the largest of three refugee camps set up in the 1990s for refugees fleeing war in Somalia. Originally established to accommodate 90,000 individuals, the camps are currently struggling to support 300,000 refugees. More than 100,000 now live in Dagahaley alone, in fact. The needs are significant and the resources far too few, especially as it pertains to food, water, sanitation, and shelter. MSF has spoken out about the need to provide more care for these refugees, something that seems ever more urgent as the numbers look likely to continue increasing.
MSF's Project Coordinator in the Pakistan district of Hangu talks about deliver emergency care in a conflict-riddled area where the medical needs are intense.
Dallas-based nurse Kaci Hickox began working with MSF in 2007. Last March, she was sent to Nigeria to be the Doctors Without Border/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) emergency medical team leader following outbreaks of measles and meningitis. Two months later, however, she found herself in the middle of the organization’s first-ever response to lead poisoning and an international effort to assist the Nigerian authorities that came to include the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
A nurse recently back from an MSF cholera treatment center in Port-de-Paix recounts what she saw, what was accomplished, and what remains to be done in the effort to battle the cholera outbreak in Haiti.
Like his mother and elder sister, two-year-old Pal suffered from kala azar, also known as leishmaniasis, a very serious disease, before receiving treatment from us in Pagil, Southern Sudan.
It is the only prison in Ituri, built for 100 or so prisoners, but housing five times more. The prison is dilapidated, but worse, until recently it has been a place where many prisoners die from hunger.
With help from a patient and national staff, Kathryn Sisterman, a U.S. nurse on her first assignment with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in northern Central African Republic (CAR) developed a song to teach people about human African trypanosomiasis, also called sleeping sickness or trypano. Here, she describes how the song came to be.
MSF Nurse Colette Kerr describes her experience in Busia, a rural district in western Kenya, where MSF runs an HIV/AIDS project. Kerr oversaw the prevention of mother-to-child transmission program for pregnant women and new mothers.
MSF Nurse Colette Kerr describes her experience in Busia, a rural district in western Kenya, where MSF runs an HIV/AIDS project. Kerr oversaw the prevention of mother-to-child transmission program for pregnant women and new mothers.
Sandra was raped by thieves who came to steal her family's savings in Bunia, DRC. They beat her father, and threatened to burn down their home if she reported them.
Sandra had camped in the church for two nights, alone with no water or food, hiding from her attackers while she waited for us. The villagers had asked if she needed anything. She had told them, “No. I just want to be alone.” We treated her, diminishing her risk of catching HIV.
During the rainy season, which would coincide with the hunger gap—the time just before the next harvest when food stocks dwindle—we would treat more than 1,200 severely and moderately malnourished children every week. Because of this great need, we refused to allow anything to interfere with our activities.
"Internally displaced people in Colombia often describe themselves as being 'refugees for life'. On the one hand, this stigmatizes them. On the other, the conflict has penetrated deeply into the social fabric of society."
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.
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.
Jane Hannon, a 39-year-old nurse from Baltimore, was in Manicaland Province in eastern Zimbabwe during November and December 2008. Here, she talks about trying to help people with cholera in the middle of a large-scale, rapidly spreading outbreak, in a country that has fallen into extreme disrepair.
Some 900 people have been systematically murdered in a string of brutal attacks across northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) since the end of 2008. The attacks were carried out in the country’s Haut Uélé Province by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group active in Uganda and Sudan for over two decades.
Dealing with cholera is different than other emergencies I have worked on. It was the speed of it that made it so different. When you enter an area with many people sick from cholera or a clinic completely overloaded with cholera patients, you know lives will soon be lost.
I was awakened in the night by a phone call from a nurse on night duty who had been told that four children were seen along the road too sick to continue their walk to the nearest CTU.
MSF nurse practitioner Deborah Van Dyke helped run a medical program in the remote village of Pibor. Here she describes the experiences that affected her the most.
When fighting erupted between armed groups and government forces in the North Kivu province of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in August 2007, it forced an estimated 10,000 Congolese to flee for safety over the border into Uganda. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) helped set up a transit site in Nyakabanda, situated about 10 miles from the DRC border in Uganda’s Kisoro district. Nurse Laura Cobey arrived to be field coordinator for the MSF project in October, just as a renewed surge in fighting pushed another wave of Congolese to seek refuge in Nyakabanda. Cobey describes the quick opening of the site and conditions for the estimated 13,000 people who lived there until its December closing.
The Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) team in Masisi in the Democratic Republic of Congo's North Kivu province is comprised of 100 Congolese and 5 international staff, works in the 120-bed hospital and a health center. They offer surgical care to war-wounded, as well as general health care and nutritional support to displaced people and the local population. Anne Khoudiacoff, 29, is a Belgian nurse who arrived in DRC in early October. Here she describes her work.
It is Brazilian nurse Gabriela Adao's fourth mission with MSF. At Island Hospital, Gabriela is developing alternative adherence tools to make sure that tuberculosis (TB) patients actually take their drugs properly, and ultimately recover.
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.
Four days after the South Asian earthquake struck on October 8, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) nurse Chrissie McVeigh flew by helicopter from Islamabad to the village of Lamnian in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. She describes her work in the area, which has been almost completely destroyed.
Rebecca Singer is a nurse from Denver, Colorado, who has spent five months working with MSF to provide treatment and support for victims of rape and other forms of sexual violence at Benson Hospital's Gender-Based Violence Clinic. Rebecca writes of her experiences thus far in Monrovia.
MSF medical teams are working in Indonesia's Aceh province to assist people left homeless by the earthquake and tsunami disaster in South Asia. MSF volunteer nurse Elaine Lau describes her first days in Aceh with fellow MSF volunteer Albert Ko, an engineer.
MSF nurse Rakel Ludviksen and her colleague Jean Pierre Amigo spent November in the Jebel Si mountains, an extremely remote region of North Darfur, Sudan.
Over the past 18 months, MSF has vaccinated more than 500,000 children in a continuing campaign against measles in some of the most inaccessible areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). MSF nurse Jessica Nestrell is coordinating the vaccination campaign.
A French nurse and a Canadian logistician, volunteers with MSF, have just returned from nearly two months as a two-person team in the town of Mornay, located in the Darfur region of Sudan.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is one of the few aid agencies still working in Liberia. Tom Quinn, a nurse who works for MSF, is writing a diary for BBC News Online.
Mary Jo Frawley, an American RN and veteran of six MSF field missions, joined an MSF team this winter for a measles vaccination campaign in the remote mountain villages of Tajikistan.
Doctors Without Borders is approved by the Internal Revenue Service as a 501 (C) (3) tax-exempt organization, and all donations are tax deductible to the extent provided by law. Doctors Without Borders Federal Identification Number (EIN) is 13-3433452.
