Guinea

A network of volunteer community health agents set up by MSF is helping tackle malaria in remote areas of Guinea.

While gains made in the fight against HIV/AIDS in the past decade are encouraging, countries most affected by the pandemic continue to struggle to place enough people on treatment and implement the best science and strategies to fight the disease.

More than 170,000 people in the Boffa region of Guinea recently became the first in Africa to receive a new two-dose oral vaccine for cholera.

After a cholera epidemic broke out in Guinea, MSF began a mass vaccination campaign, the first time the organization has done so in Africa.

The team is concentrating on tackling malaria in this region where the disease is rampant year-round. 

MSF teams in Guinea were shocked by the degree of violence after demonstrators were attacked and gunned down by security forces in the Guinean capital of Conakry earlier this month. The teams helped treat more than 400 wounded, a third of whom had serious injuries.

Hospitals in Conakry have been overwhelmed by an influx of hundreds of wounded following the violent repression of a large-scale protest in the Guinean capital.

Since August 5, MSF teams have been distributing thousands of mosquito nets to the population of Matam, a district in the capital Conakry, where the organization is running a nutritional and primary health care program.

In September 2008, MSF began an emergency intervention in the civilian prison of Guéckédou in southeastern Republic of Guinea.

Endemic in West Africa, cholera has once again struck in Guinea. The arrival of the rains at the end of May, notably in the capital, Conakry, has created an ideal breeding ground for the disease to spread. Faced with an increasing number of cases, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has boosted its direct support of the local health services.

New York/Conakry, February 13, 2007 – Since Saturday, February 10, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has treated approximately 355 people injured during demonstrations and fighting in Conakry and Gueckedou, Guinea. The majority of them were wounded by stray bullets.

Last spring, the media showed brief interest in the fate of tens of thousands of refugees and displaced persons in this West African region. Since then, fighting in Liberia has uprooted even more people, creating internally displaced persons and sending others to neighboring countries. The measures taken to protect and assist these people do not meet their needs.

The refugee camp at Kuankan, 30 miles (50 kilometers) inside Guinea in Macenta Prefecture, was set up to house 15,000 people. But from January to August 2002, nearly 30,000 people made their way to Kuankan after having been driven out by fighting from Lofa, northern Liberia.

Since the start of 2001, waves of attacks by armed groups on refugee camps located in a small parcel of land in southwestern Guinea known as Langue de Gueckedou, or "Parrot's Beak," have placed more than 100,000 refugees who had escaped fighting in Sierra Leone and Liberia and tens of thousands of Guinean citizens at severe risk. With armed groups on all sides, it has been impossible for most of the people to escape, and very difficult for any humanitarian aid to reach those in need.