Médecins Sans Frontières - Cholera – How to set up a Cholera Treatment Centre (ENG)

Unique Identifier Code / URN MSF198967

Date taken / Date Recorded 18/06/2017 12:00 AM

Country Unspecified Country

Commissioning section MSF-FRANCE

Copyright MSF

Usage Rights (MSF) Advertising Campaign, External Media, MSF Fundraising, MSF Publications, Social Media

Formal Consent Copy available no

Editor's rating ★★★★★ (C)

Video format h264 (Constrained Baseline) (avc1 / 0x31637661)

Duration 3m13s

Maximum Size 1920px × 1080px 331.86 MB

Additional Information / Shotlist CHOLERA
Yemen is currently facing an outbreak of cholera. Imagine you're a logistician and that you've been sent there on assignment.
You’re a water and sanitation expert, and MSF has just sent to you to Sana’a, the capital of Yemen.
ONSCREEN TEXT: LOGISTICIAN – WATER AND SANITATION EXPERT – SANA’A – BRIEFING - AMRAN GOVERNORATE – Cholera Treatment Centre, CTC – 50 beds – 3 days
First, you meet with the Head of Mission who puts you in the picture. Suspected cholera cases have just been reported in a town in Amran governorate. Your task is to set up a 50-bed cholera treatment centre — or CTC for short. Once you get there, you’ll have three days to get the centre up and running.
You set off immediately, with this truck transporting the six tons of supplies and equipment you’ll need.
A site’s been found near the town’s health centre. How can this empty space be converted into a CTC?
ONSCREEN TEXT: How can this empty space be converted into a CTC?
First, it needs to be divided up into four areas.
Three for patient observation, hospitalisation and recovery. The fourth for staff only.
ONSCREEN TEXT: Observation – Hospitalisation – Recovery – Staff
To pass from one area to another, you’ll need to set up different circuits. One for patients and their caregivers, one for staff, one for waste management and one for the handling of corpses.
ONSCREEN TEXT: DISINFECTION AREA
Everyone entering and exiting a CTC goes through a disinfection area. A guard will spray chlorinated water onto the soles of people’s feet or shoes as they go in and out. People must wash their hands too, make sure chlorinated water is available to do so.
You’ll also need plastic sheeting to cover the ground in the patient tents. It needs to be regularly cleaned using a chlorine solution.
Now for the beds. You’ll use specialised beds, with holes in them for severely dehydrated patients too weak to get up. Place buckets next to each bed as cholera patients suffer from vomiting and diarrhoea. There also needs to be something to hang a saline drip.
Drips are not required in the observation and recovery tents where patients need just oral rehydration salts mixed with water.
ONSCREEN TEXT: OBSERVATION AREA – RECOVERY AREA
The staff area will be used to store supplies. CTCs demand a lot of medical supplies and equipment. These include the famous oral rehydration salts but also chlorine, IV equipment, buckets, and so on.
You’ll also need to organise water supply. CTCs use huge quantities of water, water that has to be chlorinated to avoid risk of contamination.
It’s also where staff prepare the chlorine solutions. Depending on what it’s for (cleaning floors, spraying feet, washing hands, handling of corpses) different concentrations are made up and used in specific areas in the centre.
Lastly, you’ll have to install latrines and hand-washing points, which help prevent the spread of cholera. Because you have two objectives:
to provide care to patients but also to contain the epidemic. And it doesn’t end there: your teams will visit the whole area treating water sources, raising awareness to the disease and implementing hygiene measures in homes and public spaces.
ONSCREEN TEXT: TWO OBJECTIVES – CHOLERA
Fulfilling all of the above and complying with a range of stringent procedures are as crucial in Yemen now as they are during any other cholera epidemic.