“People are up to their necks in the water,” tells Rivkah van Barneveld, who is coordinating the emergency response in West Bengale. “Houses are either destroyed or flooded, most people can’t sleep dry. With the monsoon arriving very soon, shelter is one of the main priorities. MSF is providing families with plastic sheeting and blankets.”
In Pakistan, MSF does not accept funding from any government or donor agency, and relies solely on private donations from the general public to carry out its work. MSF also runs medical programmes in Peshawar, Lower Dir, Malakand, Mansehra, Kurram Agency and Baluchistan province.
Pakistan’s Mardan District, in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), is trying to cope with an influx of more than one million people fleeing war in the region. While MSF teams have not detected alarming mortality or epidemic rates among the population, existing medical facilities in the region are trying to cope with meeting the basic health needs of an extra one million people. MSF has increased the number of hospital wards in the Mardan Medical Complex and is supporting the nearby Takht Bhai Rural Health Centre to help treat the growing number of patients.
For over half a century the Rohingya, the Muslim minority population in Myanmar, has fled the severe repression and persecution they face in their homeland to seek refuge in Bangladesh and other neighbouring countries. Increasing violence and intimidation are forcing the Rohingya to flee once again. MSF reports on the appalling living conditions and maltreatment refugees are enduring at the hands of local authorities in Kutupalong makeshift camp, Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh.
“These people have fled terrible violence and lived through the worst horrors,” said Amaury Grégoire, MSF Congo Emergency Pool co-ordinator. “They have lost a father, a mother, a husband, a wife or a child. Most of their villages have been burnt to the ground. They have been directly affected by the atrocities. Thousands of people are suffering from the violence they have lived through or seen: some have been kidnapped, raped, beaten up or simply killed.”
While Sri Lanka's Ministry of Health has set up a system to provide initial treatment to the wounded and sick people in the camps, the needs remain immense, requiring around-the-clock medical presence in the camps to respond to all emergencies.
MSF has the capacity to scale up surgical and medical care for the displaced inside the camps if authorization is given.
Imagine coming home and having to walk through open sewage running through your neighbourhood streets and around your house. There is no clean running water here - some homes have been without clean water for a year - so they are forced to drink from any source.
Isangi, Oriental Province, DR Congo - June 2005
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Imagine coming home and having to walk through open sewage running through your neighbourhood streets and around your house. There is no clean running water here - some homes have been without clean water for a year - so they are forced to drink from any source.
