Liberia

Recent examples from DRC and Liberia.

Survivors of the violence in western Ivory Coast talk about their experiences and their hopes and fears for the future.

Many villages are still empty, their communities hiding in the bush, displaced in camps, or living as refugees in Liberia.

After hiding out in the forest for two weeks, this family from the Ivory Coast crossed the river that separates their troubled homeland from Liberia’s Nimba County, then paused before resuming a journey they hope leads to safety. Ivory Coast has been convulsed by months of post-election strife that has forced hundreds of thousands of people to seek sanctuary elsewhere.

The post-election violence began to subside almost a month ago, but emergency medical needs remain at critical levels.

MSF continues to assess the needs and provide medical and material support in health facilities in the East and West of Ivory Coast, and to assist refugees and host communities in Liberia.

In Abidjan, movement continues to be severely restricted or impossible due to insecurity, which makes it extremely difficult for patients to reach hospitals and for medical staff to access patients.

Ivory Coast is experiencing a new spiral of violence that is endangering populations’ access to medical care.

MSF expresses concern over the deteriorating situation in the Ivory Coast and the border region with Liberia, and seeks to assist refugees and internally displaced people fleeing escalating violence.

As post-election violence continues to escalate in Ivory Coast, MSF is reinforcing its medical assistance in several locations.

Since last December, tens of thousands of people have fled post-election violence in Ivory Coast and sought refuge across the country’s border with Liberia.

MSF has been monitoring the refugee situation along the border tand providing free primary health care at mobile clinics.

After 20 years, MSF handed over the two hospitals it has been running in Liberia to the country's Ministry of Health and Social Welfare.

Theresa Saday, 40, is confronting the problem of sexual violence in Liberia, where she works with MSF to counsel sexual violence victims and their parents.

“We meet parents on a daily basis who are unhappy that their children, who have been raped or abused, will go to the police. These parents are anxious, they are afraid for their children’s safety. So they turn to us with their concerns and for support.”

I went to the shop to buy toilet paper for my uncle and I noticed a guy staring at me. Then he came over and asked my name. I didn’t want to tell him my real name, so I said it was ‘Junior’. He asked where I lived and invited me to come to his house.

MSF is providing care for victims of sexual violence in two hospitals and two clinics in Liberia’s capital, Monrovia. A drama group helps raise awareness of rape, social workers provide psychosocial support to patients and medical-legal certificates are issued for everyone. Coordinated lobbying efforts resulted in the adoption of a new medical-legal certificate, which is now being implemented at a national level.

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.

For the past nine months, Lisa Errol, a midwife from New Zealand, has been treating pregnant women at the MSF clinic in a camp for internally displaced people in the Liberian town of Salala in Bong county.

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.

West African countries, including Liberia, Guinea, Mauritania, Guinea Bissau, and Burkina Faso, are facing a particularly bad cholera outbreak this year. In most countries, a large number of patients come from the capital cities. MSF, already active in fighting cholera across the region, has sent in more staff and supplies in response to the outbreaks.

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.

Andrew Schechtman is a volunteer doctor working for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Monrovia. In this excerpt form his diary, he describes the life and death struggles faced by those caught in the crossfire in the war-torn the Liberian capital.

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.