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Haiti: MSF Opens New Surgical Center in Port-au-Prince
Work on the 107-bed center began in 2011 and was completed in February, 2012. The center treats victims of accidental trauma, such as falls and road accidents, and victims of violence who have suffered beatings, assaults, and gunshot wounds.
“MSF is now supporting the Ministry of Public Health and Population with 600 hospital beds in Haiti for emergency care,” said Drossart. “This is still far from adequate, but is nevertheless an advance.” In a country where 75 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, and where referral facilities are vastly inadequate, MSF’s new center will improve access to surgical care for the population of Port-au-Prince’s metropolitan area.
Haiti 2012 © Yann Libessart/MSF
The entrance to MSF’s new surgical center in Tabarre.
Doctors without Borders….
Somalia, September 2011. (Photo: Yann Libessart/MSF)
Doctors without Borders is one of the few aid groups that works in areas of Somalia controlled by al-Shabab militants. The aid group has just released a new book about the complexities of that sort of work. It’s called: Humanitarian Negotiations Revealed.
Duncan Mclean helps manage the group’s work in Somalia. He says that the hospital Doctors Without Borders operates on the outskirts of Mogadishu treats any injured individual, including al-Shabab fighters.
“A certain degree of that aid that we’re providing will be used for other ends than what we intended it to be,” Mclean said. “And it would be naïve to consider otherwise, to maintain this idealistic image of aid work.”
Full interview with Mclean here.
@don7985 seasons riddim http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQokGgqC_-k
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Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is providing humanitarian aid to Haitian asylum seekers in Tabatinga, a town in the state of Amazonas, Brazil. MSF teams have been monitoring the situation of Haitians in this small town, located at the border between Brazil, Colombia, and Peru, since November. In December, MSF started distributing more than 1,300 personal hygiene kits and other relief items.
The Haitian asylum seekers first began arriving in Tabatinga in March 2010, escaping a country devastated by a massive earthquake. More than 1,200 Haitians are currently staying in the town, two-thirds of whom say they were directly affected by the earthquake and came to Brazil in hopes of helping other family members who stayed in Haiti.
Photo: Brazil 2011 © Alessandra Vilas
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“Before the earthquake, the situation was already difficult in Haiti. Now, there is nothing left, there are no opportunities. But having to wait in Tabatinga is even worse.” — 32-year-old Olga, from the small room she shares with four other Haitians in Brazil. MSF teams have been monitoring the situation of Haitians in this small town, located at the border between Brazil, Colombia, and Peru, since November. The Haitian asylum seekers first began arriving in Tabatinga in March 2010, escaping a country devastated by a massive earthquake. (via doctorswithoutborders)
A mother and child rest in the pediatric ward of MSF’s hospital in the Bicentenaire area of Port-au-Prince. Active in Haiti since 1991, MSF has opened five hospitals, including this one, and fought a widespread cholera epidemic in the country since a massive earthquake struck in January 2010. More than 3,000 staff are providing orthopedic surgery and post-operative treatment to earthquake survivors and emergency obstetric and neonatal care to mothers and children, among other services. The cholera epidemic continues—after a mid-May spike in cases in Port-au-Prince and elsewhere in the country, MSF reopened cholera treatment units in several areas to relieve the pressure on existing facilities.
Photo: Haiti 2011 © Yann Libessart/MSF