Snapshots of MSF’s Work with Refugees and Internally Displaced People

Last week alone, over 500 severely malnourished children were admitted to our nutritional programs. One out of six of these children needed to be hospitalized due to medical complications. If this trend continues, malnutrition may soon affect more of the general population such as children over five-years-old and vulnerable adults. The situation is tragic and we are unable to provide the aid necessary to prevent further deterioration of the situation.

– Bruno Jochum, 2008

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MSF works in …a dense jungle region heavily affected by the conflict. The population often does not have access to basic health care. We reach these populations through our mobile clinics where we travel for hours by car and by canoe, guided by indigenous people.

– Tony Tomasouw

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After the eruption of the fighting on May 14…nearly 50,000 people have been forced to flee Abyei area. Almost all of them left with no personal belongings, they only have the clothes they were wearing when the fighting started. They are scattered over a wide area because they fear new attacks. It also means that the majority of the displaced have no shelter and access to food or clean water. MSF is also very worried about malnutrition as our hospital in Abyei admitted 80 children in the last week before the evacuation and our teams were planning to extend their activities to cover all the needs, which were huge. In our outpatient department the global malnutrition rate had risen over 50 percent before the fighting started.

– Andreas Papp

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Humanitarian aid saves lives today, until peace, until reconstruction, until development, maybe. But humanitarian action never builds much; it concentrates on saving lives now until they can be rebuilt tomorrow. It is not hopeful, it is immediate and it has to be judged on its capacity to be with victims in their hour of need and to help them survive the crisis, the war or the epidemic. On this count, Iraq more than any other conflict today shows up the limits of humanitarian assistance.

– Christopher Stokes

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Families have been torn apart. One of our Hmong staff members who joined the protest has been sent back to Laos without her children and we know of other similar cases. Many of these refugees have expressed grave fears at the prospect of being sent back to Laos.

– Gilles Isard

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The displaced persons and the so-called host villages are reaching the end of the line. As the months go by, their survival mechanisms are reaching the limit. These people are exhausted, increasingly weak, and consequently, increasingly ill.

– Anna Halford

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