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Voices from the Field |
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"We need to make sure the survivors
are well taken care of" [Read]
February 2005
Dr. Morten Rostrup, MD, worked in Indonesia's devastated Aceh province from January 6-24, 2005, providing medical consultations to thousands of people who survived the earthquake-triggered tsunamis and helping support the hospital in Meulabo. |
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War Surgery in Port-au-Prince, Haiti [Read]
February 2005
Dr. Jean-Paul Dixmeras, a surgeon from Paris and a member of the Board ofDirectors for the French section of MSF, recently returned from providing emergency surgical care in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. MSF is trying to address the needs of civilians injured in the waves of violence that have wracked the city's most impoverished neighborhoods. |
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Mountains of Darfur: "Everyone we met had lost someone" [Read]
January 2005
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (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. Together they organized an immunization campaign and vaccinated more than 8,000 children against measles. They also screened almost 4,000 children for malnutrition and provided 400 medical consultations, mainly for diarrhea, skin infections, respiratory infections and conjunctivitis. |
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Idawati's Story: Surviving the Tsunami in Aceh [Read]
January 23, 2005
Claire Rieux, MD, is a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (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. First MSF dispatched a surgical team to provide surgical care for people suffering from infected wounds. The MSF team was later replaced by a group of Indonesian surgeons. Now MSF is providing general medical support to the hospital. The following is a diary of Dr. Rieux's work at Sigli Hospital. |
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Aceh is completely smashed [Read]
January 3, 2005
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (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. The two experienced MSF volunteers have worked in previous emergencies in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Sudan, and Uzbekistan. |
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Tropical Storms and Political Violence
in
Haiti
[Read]
November 2004
Doctor Gabriel Salazar, an experienced MD with nearly 11 years� experience with Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), flew directly from Colombia to Haiti last September when the country was devastated by tropical storm Jeanne.
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Bringing Medical Care to Kass, South
Darfur [Read]
October 2004
Matthias Hrubey, MD, set up the Doctors Without Borders/
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) primary health clinic in Kass,
a town in South Darfur, Sudan. Nearly 48,000 people have fled violence
in the region to Kass, swelling the population to 77,000. The MSF clinic
opened in mid-July and Dr. Hrubey and a Sudanese doctor see up to 200 patients
every day. |
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Going Upriver: MSF Aid Worker
Battles Measles in Congo [Read]
October 2004
Traveling by motorbike and canoe through the rainforests
and rivers of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Doctors Without
Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) nurse Jessica
Nestrell lays the groundwork for vaccinating 100,000 children against
measles, a disease that kills 500,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa
each year. |
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The Smallest Victims: Fighting Malnutrition Amidst Civil War in Uganda
[Read]
August 2004
When Dr. Robert Levin, a Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) volunteer, first saw Evaline, he thought the young girl was 30 years old. The family physician from Minneapolis treated Evaline and many others for severe malnutrition during six months in northern Uganda's war-wracked city of Lira. |
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"We Are Still Alive" [Read]
July 2004
Testimonies From 4 HIV/AIDS Treatment Patients in Arua, Uganda. |
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"We Could See Villages Burning Along the Road" [Read]
March 2004
For months, a French nurse and a Canadian logistician worked in Darfur, western Sudan, where people are enduring extreme violence and have little access to emergency assistance. The pair struggled to provide aid and treat civilians wounded during the increasingly frequent attacks in and around the town of Mornay. |
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"Haiti chéri, Haiti f�ché" - Saint-Marc, Haiti, After the Violence [Read]
March 2004
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 recently been field coordinator for the MSF program in St. Marc, Haiti. |
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"Impatience Is the Most Important Thing"
[Read]
January 2004
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.
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Uganda in the Grip of Violence [Read]
December 2003
Tonia Marquardt, MD, describes the medical emergency faced by tens of thousands of people who sought refuge in the town of Soroti following attacks in northeastern Uganda this fall. |
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Bringing Antiretroviral Therapy to South Africa
[Read]
November 2003
In Khayelitsha township, a poor area near Cape Town, Eric Goemaere, MD, head of MSF in South Africa, works with colleagues and local AIDS advocacy groups to bring antiretroviral (ARV) treatment to those who need it and to push the country's government to do much more.
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"I Took My Children and Fled"
[Read]
October 2003
These two stories were told to MSF by people living in Bunia, the city in the Ituri Province of Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that was the epicenter of brutal violence this past May.
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Q & A with Field Coordinator Peter Orr
[Read]
October 2003
In late August, Peter Orr returned from the Gaza Strip, where he served as field coordinator for MSF's medical/psychological program. The deteriorating political situation has been disastrous for civilians living in the Gaza Strip and elsewhere in the Palestinian territories.
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Treating AIDS in Honduras
[Read]
September 2003
Volunteer social worker Alain Rias is helping MSF provide treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS in Honduras. MSF's work in Honduras was be featured on an episode of "Doctors Without Borders: Life in the Field" on the National Geographic Channel.
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Diary of a Liberian Aid Worker
[Read]
August 2003
While civil war raged, MSF was one of the few aid agencies still working in Liberia. Nurse Tom Quinn, stationed in Monrovia, wrote a serialized diary for BBC News Online.
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Liberia: "It's Not Easy"
[Read]
July 2003
Andrew Schechtman is a volunteer doctor who worked for Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in Monrovia. In this excerpt from his diary, he describes the life and death struggles faced by those caught in the crossfire in the war-torn the Liberian capital.
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Anesthesiologist Working in Baghdad
[Read]
May 2003
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. She worked for several days at Al Zafarania hospital in an impoverished area on the southeast edge of the capital and assessed hospitals and health centers throughout the city.
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Leaving "The Sweet City"
[Read]
April 2003
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. He was able to leave the project in the hands of Afghan national staff, who continued to provide health care to the 30,000 displaced people in Zhare Dasht ("yellow desert") camp.
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Vaccinating Against Measles in Tajikistan
[Read]
March 2003
Mary Jo Frawley, an American R.N. and veteran of six MSF field missions, joined a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) team this winter for a measles vaccination campaign in the remote mountain villages of Tajikistan.
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We Just Did the Things That Needed Doing: Surgery in War-Torn Ivory Coast [Read]
February 2003
Bruce Frank, an American surgeon, spent a month working with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in the Ivory Coast.
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Midwife Works to Prevent Transmission of HIV from Mother to Child in Mozambique [Read]
January 2003
Birgit St�mpfl, a German midwife, runs the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Chamanculo clinic for Prevention of Mother-To-Child Transmission (PMTCT).
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Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Sets Up New Refugee Camp in Guinea. [Read]
December 2002
"It had become the acceptance of the unacceptable," says MSF-USA's Patrice Pagé about living conditions for Liberian refugees in the Kuankan refugee camp in Guinea, where he volunteered this year.
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A Personal Diary by Els Adams, MSF Project Coordinator For Malange, Angola [Read]
May 2002
What is it like to volunteer with MSF during one of Africa's worst famines in a decade?
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An interview with Jason Smith, former MSF Head of Mission for the Jalozai refugee camp near Peshawar, Pakistan [Read]
October 2001
MSF has been the leading aid organization in Jalozai since November 2000, providing basic health care, water, and nutritional assistance. What is it like to oversee such an enourmous humanitarian intervention?
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An email from Brice de le Vingne, former MSF Field Coordinator in Afghanistan [Read]
October 2001
Brice de le Vingne had been working in Afghanistan for three weeks as an MSF field coordinator when he had to evacuate a few days after the September 11 attacks in the U.S. He then went to the Pakistani-Afghan border to assess possible sites for refugee camps. Currently, Brice is working in Tajikistan on humanitarian access to the war-torn country. Read his email from the field!
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Blending Tradition and Innovation: A Midwife in Somalia [Read]
Spring 2000
Rondi Anderson, a nurse-midwife from Pennsylvania, left her practice in 1999 to volunteer with MSF in Galkayo, Somalia. Read her letter from the field!
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New York Doctor Performs Soccer Field Surgery [Read]
May 2001
Follow MSF surgeon Silvio Podda on his rounds in a makeshift El Salvadorean hospital providing care to victims of a 7.6 magnitude earthquake.
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