A Month in Focus - February 2016
YEMEN - Aid to beseiged Taiz
SYRIA - Another hospital destroyed in Idlib province
MAURITANIA - Forgotten in the desert
PAKISTAN - FATA's crippled health infrastructure
TREATING SEVERE BURNS
MIGRATION - "There’s a problem of respect for human dignity".
YEMEN
Since August 2015, Houthis and the local resistance supported by the Saudi-led coalition have been battling
for control of Taiz, Yemen's third biggest city.
The part of the city where most of the hospitals are situated has been under Houthi siege.
This is the Al-Houban district of Taiz, outside the enclave.
Over 300 patients come here to the mother and child hospital everyday.
MSF opened this facility in November 2015 as most of the city’s public health structures are in the area under
siege, and there is a to healthcare.
Priority is given to the critically ill, pregnant women and children.
Because of the airstrikes and the shelling, this mother waited until sunrise to bring her child to the hospital.
MOTHER IN HOSPITAL (Arabic)
Yesterday, she got a fever, and started vomiting and coughing, and then at sunset, she had a spasm. We
wanted to come to the hospital then, but there's a war out there, it was night, it's too dangerous. So we waited
until daylight and then made the journey.
This young boy is having trouble breathing.
SONORE Dr. Arwa Ahmed (Arabic)
He probably has an acute chest infection. We’ll give him the medication he needs and keep him under
observation for three days. We’ll also be running lab tests.
Just a few kilometres away is the part of the city besieged by the rebels.
After 5 months of intense negotiations, MSF teams have at last been able to enter the enclave and deliver
essential medical supplies to Al Thawra hospital, one of only two public hospitals still open.
These facilities are in desperate need of more aid.
Michele Trainiti, MSF project coordinator in Taiz, MSF
They do still have some staff but they don't have any more medicines, they don't have any more oxygens, and
they have very limited power. While outside the population have no public hospitals to go to and considering
the economic crisis that the war has brought wit them the people have no money to got to private hospitals. So
on both sides the civilian populations are really in a critical condition.
MSF teams are due to return with more supplies in a few days.
There used to be 20 hospitals for 600,000 inhabitants in Taiz, just four continue to function – and even then
only partially.
SYRIA
On Monday 15 February, a hospital in Ma’arat Al-Numan in the north of Syria was bombed, killing
16 patients and 9 medical personnel and depriving 40,000 people access to healthcare.
This is the 6th medical facility supported by MSF to be attacked since the beginning of the year.
A heap of rubble is all that’s left of this hospital in Idlib province.
Rescue teams are sifting through the debris in the hope of finding survivors.
Mazen Saoud, director of the MSF-supported hospital in Ma’arat Al-Numan (in Arabic)
"There were four airstrikes on the hospital yesterday, Monday. The first two strikes destroyed the
building and then the other two targeted the people who had come to. Nine of our medical staff were
killed.”
Hospitals are increasingly targeted.
Since January 2015, 66 MSF-supported medical facilities in Syria have been bombed or shelled on 101
seperate occasions.
It’s now become all but impossible to provide medical care to either the wounded or the sick.
Isabelle Defourny, directrice des opérations de MSF (francais)
More and more doctors and nurses are leaving Syria, and patients are afraid to go to hospitals which
get bombed.
According to the United Nations, 20,000 people trying to escape from the offensive launched against
the rebels in Aleppo by the regime and its Russian ally, are still trapped on the Syrian side of the Turk-
ish border.
MAURITANIA
The first Ma