"Cool Hand Luc"
IVORY COAST| UZBEKISTAN | SIERRA LEONE

Ivory Coast
French MSF nurse Luc Legrand is stationed at La MACA prison in Ivory Coast’s capital city of Abidjan – a horribly overcrowded detention facility where MSF has been striving to improve health care, nutrition, sanitation, and living conditions for the prison’s inmates since opening the project in 1997. Along with Damien Piron, an MSF doctor at the prison, Luc is trying to pre-empt a potential viral outbreak. The job at hand is to diagnose and contain the cause of hemorrhagic fever in one patient – a potentially deadly fever that can result in massive internal bleeding. The patient is quarantined in order not to infect other patients, but in the prison’s stifling conditions, the damage may have already been done. (read more about Ivory Coast)

Aral Sea, Uzbekistan
In the Aral Sea region of Uzbekistan, a vanishing body of water and the industrial legacy of the Soviet Union have combined to create one of the worst environmental catastrophes in the world. When the Soviet government diverted the Amu Darya river to irrigate Uzbekistan’s cotton fields, the Aral Sea began to dry up – now it is an arid plain characterized by swirling dust storms and toxic soil. Unsurprisingly, this region has Central Asia’s highest rates of TB – an infectious respiratory disease caused by airborne bacteria. Ellen Enderle, a Dutch nurse, and Richard Mowll, a British civil engineer, are dealing with distinctly different aspects of the health crisis. Ellen is treating TB among the civilian population and educating the public about MSF’s TB programs; Richard is charged with the unenviable task of removing the accumulation of 15 years of human waste in the basement of the local TB hospital. (read more about the Aral Sea region)

Sierra Leone
Rookie MSF nurse Dominique Dujardin has been sent to the border in Sierra Leone to assess the numbers of refugees arriving from neighboring Liberia, where fighting between rebels and the Liberian government escalated throughout 2002, creating population movement throughout the region. In his first mission, Dominique encounters a problem he doesn’t have the experience or medical training to deal with – a young boy far from the closest hospital who is severely ill and needs immediate diagnosis and treatment. (read more about Sierra Leone)