Médecins Sans Frontières - 3 Questions: How to Build a Field Hospital

Unique Identifier Code / URN MSF210365

Date taken / Date Recorded 09/09/2017 12:00 AM

Country Unspecified Country

Commissioning section MSF-UNITED STATES

Copyright MSF

Usage Rights (MSF) External Media, MSF Publications, Social Media

Formal Consent Copy available no

Editor's rating ★★★★★ (C)

Video format h264 (Main) (avc1 / 0x31637661)

Duration 3m13s

Maximum Size 1920px × 1080px 319.21 MB

Additional Information / Shotlist Eric Pitts
Logistics Coordinator

[0:00] Oftentimes in an emergency situation, we need to have a hospital operational very quickly. We'll start with tents or with inflatable hospitals. [0:09] This way we can, in a matter of a couple days, we can have something operational to provide services. We very quickly want to transition from [0:15] the temporary tent-based hospital into something that's more permanent.

Q1 - How do you decide where to build the hospital?

[0:19] The first thing we have to do is we have to identify the location that we'll be building the hospital.[0:25] We want to put the hospital in a location so that it's easy for people to access. Most of the refugees will be coming by foot, or they'll be carried by stretcher, and so for this reason, we often [0:33] try to put the as close to the population as possible.

[0:38] It's quite difficult to identify a site because typically refugee camps, they're put on the land that no one wants. [0:45] oftentimes floodplains or it's sites that just don't have a good topography. We've been on places where were former minefields given for refugee camps.

[0:54]Water for the hospital is very important. It's not just for drinking water. It's also to guarantee the hygiene within the hospital. we talk to a local community. We see what their opinions are, what their knowledge is of the region. We look for places where there's dried up riverbeds, and in those types of locations, we can drill underneath [00:01:09] the riverbed to find water. And then if we really can't find water anywhere, we start to use different creative methods. One method that we tried in South Sudan is we used the metal sticks method, where you take two bent metal rods in your hands, and you walk [00:01:23] very slowly over an area where you hope to find water. And then, if water is under the ground, the stick move, and they crossover each other. actually in Maban [00:01:30] in South Sudan, we used this method, and we were able to find water under the ground in a very dry region. Unfortunately it wasn't enough water for the hospital, but it was enough to have drinking water for the patients.

Q2 - What are some of the challenges you face?

[00:01:44] Many of the places that we work have very intense wet seasons and very intense dry seasons. We want to get as much work as we can done during the dry season because once the rains come roads are washed out. [00:01:57] Another issue is how to bring materials into the site.The places where we're working, there's not large markets available where we can access materials locally. So we have to bring in everything from outside. When we're bringing items across far distances [00:02:10] We also have to plan for backup supply chains,Often times the roads that we're bringing materials on could be closed. We could be bringing materials across borders, and borders could become closed. [00:02:18] So for this reason, we always have to think of multiple ways to bring in different materials.

Q3 - Who builds an MSF field hospital?
[00:02:27] We also need to identify the types of teams, the types of skills we can find. In some places we can find very good masons who can get good concrete and then we'll do cement construction. Other places we can identify only good carpenters, so we do [00:02:41] wood construction. We really have to adapt our construction methods to what the local community is used to building. [00:02:47] So when we're building our construction team, we want to bring in people from all different parts of the community. The reason we try to build diverse teams is we want everyone to benefit from our services. [00:02:58] By having a large, diverse team, more people are aware of what we're doing there, and we're making the community a part of the building of the hospital that is there to service them.