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MoroccoLife and health on the street
The focus of MSF's work in Morocco has been to bring direct care, preventive advice and psychosocial care to the people who are least likely to find it anywhere else. They are often people of the street: sex workers, homeless children and the urban destitute. The other target group has been pregnant women, both because of the country's high maternal mortality rate and because single mothers can be shunned and excluded from regular healthcare provision. MSF also brings health aid to candidates for clandestine migration. In Casablanca, MSF has been working since August 2001 on the problem of healthcare access, education and prevention. The beneficiaries of this project are women, especially single mothers, sex workers and young domestic servants. In the capital Rabat, MSF handed over the labor and delivery unit it had helped build to the Ministry of Health in June 2002. That marked the completion of a project which had focused on mother-and-child health in the neighborhood of Mers el Kheir, providing health education for women in this poor community. On the northern coast of Morocco in Tangier and the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, MSF has been working with street children, sub-Saharan migrants and sex workers see page 55 for more on the Ceuta program). The geographical situation of Tangier – it is only 14km away from the Spanish coast – makes the city a key jumping-off point for migration. MSF first worked in Morocco since 1997. |
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