Work in the Field

People living in tribal villages in central India are caught up in the conflict between Maoist rebels and government forces. Dr. Rebecca Cuthbert describes how MSF takes the clinics to them.

MSF staff recently returned from Mogadishu discuss what they saw there and the issues the humanitarian response to the ongoing crisis must address.

Dr. Hussein Sheikh Qassim, MSF Medical Coordinator in Marere, southern Somalia, describes how violence and drought are driving people from their homes in search of care and shelter.

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.

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.

"It was quite a rough journey, but the doctors and the nurses were fantastic. It was incredibly choppy; a lot of the patients were suffering from seasickness, and, at times, it was too rough to stand."

An MSF nurse describes training health workers to deal with the ongoing cholera outbreak in Haiti.

"This year, the outbreak is particularly bad. We’ve seen almost eight times the number of cases as we did during the same time last year..."

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.

"Already, we’ve had reports of something like 25 to 30 villages that have been completely swamped by this water."

MSF's two facilities in Imey in the Somali region of Ehtiopia provides crucial health care services to people who would otherwise go without.

James Kambaki, MSF project coordinator in Balochistan province, reports on the situation and on MSF's activities.

Dr. Neil Stone, a physician from Scotland, is working with MSF to respond to a major measles epidemic in Malawi in southern Africa.

An interview with Melania Raga Bejarano, head nurse in the maternity ward of San Francisco Asis Hospital in Colombia’s Chocó department.

Despite the security situation, an MSF surgical team has started work in the General Hospital of Hawijah in Kirkuk governorate

Dr. Philippe Touchard, an anesthetist, is head of emergencies at the Pasteur Hospital in Langon, near Bordeaux. Forty-eight hours after the January 12 earthquake, he flew to Haiti to reinforce MSF’s surgical teams in Port-au-Prince. Here are exerpts of his journal of this short mission.

Brigg Reilley, an MSF epidemiologist in Haiti, discusses MSF’s current priorities as well as the priorities in the weeks and months to come.

MSF emergency physician Sebastian Spencer was working at Choscal hospital in Cite Soleil, Port-au-Prince, on January 20 when the area sustained a strong aftershock. Here he describes what happened.

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.

Carol Calero is a field physician for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Currently she is working in the nutritional emergency in southwestern Central African Republic (CAR). In this interview, she talks about being in the heart of a health emergency and of the positive cases that keeps her spirits up.

Today I went to the third, and final, place where we are doing medical clinics, in the area of Dakshin Bedkashi. You really have to watch out for high tide, because you can only pass through certain places at low tide. Otherwise, where the pathway is broken, you have to go up to your chest through water with strong currents.

Today I went to the third, and final, place where we are doing medical clinics, in the area of Dakshin Bedkashi. You really have to watch out for high tide, because you can only pass through certain places at low tide. Otherwise, where the pathway is broken, you have to go up to your chest through water with strong currents.

It is my third day here in Satkira District of Bangladesh. About six weeks ago, this place was inundated with water when Cyclone Aila hit and broke many levees in a region where people live at or below sea level. The result was much like Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

It is my third day here in Satkira District of Bangladesh. About six weeks ago, this place was inundated with water when Cyclone Aila hit and broke many levees in a region where people live at or below sea level. The result was much like Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

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.

All these people had fled their villages in a hurry, and it was difficult for them to get health care because they couldn’t pay for it. That’s why it was so important for us to provide free medical consultations in both locations.

Despite ongoing conflict that has made it difficult for humanitarian organizations to be in Iraq, since 2006 Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has set up medical projects for populations in Anbar, Tameen, Ninewa, Sulemaniya, Baghdad, and Basra. MSF also runs a project in Jordan for Iraqi war wounded. Khalil Sayyad recently returned from Basra, southern Iraq, where he worked as Field Coordinator for nine months. He was part of MSF's first international team to establish a presence in Iraq since 2004, when high insecurity led MSF to leave country.

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.

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.

Luis Encinas, a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) emergency coordinator, is managing the intervention to provide care to those affected by the earthquake that hit Peru's southern coast on August 15. Three days after the disaster, MSF chartered a cargo plane, loaded it with 12 tons of relief materials, and flew into Peru. Encinas, who has been on the ground for a few days, gives an account of MSF activities.

Vanessa van Schoor worked for 13 months as Head of Mission for Doctors Without Borders'/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) project in Darfur, overseeing security, solving staff and supply issues, and balancing medical work with communication of the injustices witnessed by MSF teams. Here she talks about the risks that humanitarian aid workers face in Darfur and why the intense effort to help must continue.

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.

"The only thing separating the displaced people from life-threatening dehydration was a three-and-half inch diameter, exposed pipe that was snaking through the jungle to the town." says Barry Gutwein, a water-and-sanitation engineer from Indiana, who was dispatched to Dubie, a town in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Katanga Province.

"The only thing separating the displaced people from life-threatening dehydration was a three-and-half inch diameter, exposed pipe that was snaking through the jungle to the town." says Barry Gutwein, a water-and-sanitation engineer from Indiana, who was dispatched to Dubie, a town in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Katanga Province.

In October 2005, tens of thousands of people throughout Central America lost their homes, livelihoods, and access to clean water when Tropical Storm Stan struck the region. Laurent Dedieu, Logistics Supervisor for MSF-USA, oversaw MSF's emergency assistance program in Guatemala's Chinquimulilla region, Santa Rosa department.

Since October 2005, Hilary Bower has worked as project coordinator for MSF in the Karbi Anglong region of India's Assam state. MSF is bringing urgently needed assistance to local residents who have been forced to flee from their villages due to violence between members of two local tribes.

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.

Dr. Sylvaine Blanty, a general practitioner, has been working at the MSF therapeutic feeding center for severely malnourished children in Aguié, Niger, for a month. Before coming to Niger, she had already worked with MSF in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). She writes about her experience over the last month.

The continuing insecurity in many areas and a lack of international attention has resulted in a dearth of meaningful emergency assistance, leaving many desperate segments of society abandoned and all but forgotten. This is an interview with Colin McIlreavy, MSF head of mission in Somalia for the past year.

Dr. Giovanni Brescia, an anaesthesiologist, is part of a Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) surgical team working in Lamno town, in Aceh province on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

Morten Rostrup, MD, worked in Indonesia’s devastated Aceh province providing medical consultations to thousands of people who survived the earthquake-triggered tsunamis.

Claire Rieux, MD, is an MSF volunteer working in Sigli Hospital in Indonesia's Aceh province. Most of the Indonesian medical staff members in Sigli Hospital were killed by the tsunami.

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.

Matthias Hrubey, MD, is a general practitioner who runs the MSF primary health clinic in Kass, a town whose population has swelled to an estimated 77,000 with the influx of approximately 48,000 people displaced by violence in the region.

Jason Wong, MD, a family physician from Seattle, Washington, recently returned from a three-month medical mission in Darfur, a region in western Sudan where more than a million people have been displaced by war.

Robert Levin, MD, a family physician from Minneapolis, Minnesota, returned recently from a six-month mission in Lira, a town in northern Uganda, where he treated malnourished children admitted to a therapeutic feeding center operated by MSF.

Forty-year-old Dr. Albert Tshiula headed MSF's Emergency Response Team in DR Congo after several years as a national staff physician. He has been field coordinator for the MSF program in St. Marc, Haiti.

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.

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.

Joy O'Hazy, MD, is currently with MSF in northeast Iran, where she provides medical care to Afghan refugees. Here she describes running a mobile clinic that sees up to 4,000 patients a month.

Frank Smithuis, MD, is the country manager and medical coordinator for MSF in Myanmar, the country formerly known as Burma. He highlights how MSF teams are working in this isolated country to provide urgently needed care to fight HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis.

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.

In April of 2003, epidemiologist Brigg Reilley, a program officer for MSF, returned from an assessment of MSF's HIV/AIDS prevention programs in Humera.

Anesthesiologist Marie-Louise Linderer arrived in Baghdad in late April directly following the US occupation of Iraq to help reinforce MSF's team in the city.

Diderik van Halsema, Project Coordinator in Kandahar, Afghanistan was forced to evacuate his team from southern Afghanistan in April, 2003, when increasing violence against foreigners made it impossible to stay.

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.

Volunteer Els Adams was project coordinator for MSF during the terrible famine in post-war Angola.

Fokko de Vries, MD, (38) left Amsterdam in early April to assist Doctors Without Borders in refugee camps in Macedonia. He has previously worked in Sarajevo, Rwanda, and Sri Lanka. Fokko kept a diary of his first week in the camps in Brazda and Ragusa.