BACK FROM THE FIELD: Bernard Leménager, surgeon, Mocha, Yemen (ARAB)

INTERVIEW with Bernard Leménager, French surgeon back from his assignment in Mocha in Yemen.
Filmed 25 SOct 2018

MSF248746

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BACK FROM THE FIELD: Bernard Leménager, surgeon, Mocha, Yemen (ENG)

Subt. English

BACK FROM THE FIELD: Bernard Leménager, surgeon, Mocha, Yemen. Oct 2018.

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Unique Identifier Code / URN MSF248746

Date taken / Date Recorded 25/10/2018 12:00 AM

Country Yemen

Commissioning section MSF-FRANCE

Photographer / videographer / producer Simon Rolin

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 3m5s

Maximum Size 1920px × 1080px 272.27 MB

Additional Information / Shotlist INTERVIEW with Bernard Leménager, French surgeon back from Mocha in Yemen.
Filmed 25 SOct 2018

INTRO
People arriving at the hospital come from far away. With the frontline cutting off access to other health facilities, they’re forced to make the journey to Mocha.

Back from the field
Bernard Leménager, MSF surgeon

We were admitting people wounded in the war, casualties from the frontline or around Mocha itself, from all over. They had bullet wounds, or wounds inflicted by bomb or landmine explosions. We provided general civilian surgery too, for people with appendicitis or peritonitis, for example. We also performed caesareans as the maternity unit in Mocha didn’t have a surgeon and was in no state to carry out caesareans.

SLATE 01: Two-thirds of patients from Hodeidah are war casualties requiring specific surgical treatment

The procedures we use for treating war wounds are not the same as in non-conflict trauma surgery. Weapons of war don’t inflict the same damage as a butcher’s knife in a workplace accident. Also, patients often came late for treatment because it took them at least two hours to get to the hospital from the frontline. The time to track down an ambulance, to prepare them for the journey and then the journey, it can take two, four or five hours.
A child was admitted. He had a tourniquet around his leg because of a popliteal artery injury at the level of the knee. The tourniquet had been applied ten hours before. Luckily it wasn’t tied that tight. The kid needed a very specific type of surgery we’d never do in France. And we saved his leg.

SLATE 02: MSF’s Mocha hospital is the only facility in the region delivering emergency surgical treatment

There are no obstetric surgeons in Mocha. There’s a maternity run by Yemen’s Ministry of Health, which has midwives, but no gynaecologist. They attend normal deliveries, all the straightforward ones. But still, perform between three and five caesareans every week. I was quite surprised to see there were all kinds of reasons for caesareans in Mocha. We saw lots of women with eclampsia, a disorder occurring during the late stages of pregnancy that can trigger seizures. It can be quite problematic. And there were obstructed labours.
SLATE 03: Half of all women admitted to the emergency room in MSF’s hospital in Mocha
require obstetric care
The people we work with are all very committed, the nursing staff as well as the young doctors taken on for our emergency rooms. A lot of them are actually from Mocha. Rarely have I witnessed such a spirit of cooperation.