A Month in Focus - January 2016France - Grande-Synthe: camp or "rubbish dump"?Yemen - Targeted attacks on medical facilities.DRC - Victims of a forgotten conflictPalestinian Territories - Bedouins at the mercy of the Israeli armyEbola - Where do we stand?Libya - " There’s a real possibility for working there"
France
There are over 2,500 refugees, most of whom are Kurds, sleeping rough in the mud in
Grande-Synthe near Dunkirk in northern France.
For MSF’s teams working here, this place is more like a "rubbish dump” than a camp.Just another day in Grande-Synthe: a recently arrived family is setting up base in the wood. They’re putting up a tent supposed to shelter them from the cold, wind, rain and mud over the next few weeks. Meanwhile, other people attempt to clean the mud off their clothes, wash dishes in the pouring rain or try keep warm in makeshift shelters.
Iranian refugee (in English)
This is my tent. And this is our life. And as you can see there is a lot of garbage here, and rats playing
around our tent and go inside and mess with our food. Here people take shit and pee around because
there is no toilets, they are full of garbage, bad conditions. We cannot use the toilets.Just getting around can be challenging enough… The ground is mired in mud, as are people’s clothes… There aren’t enough latrines or showers... Piles of rubbish attract rats... And, as the temperature drops close to zero, the police stop volunteers from delivering winterised shelters.
German volunteer (in English)
You see what's happening here, this is not rain, this is ice drops. We have ice drops, we have water like
this, deep to you knees. And we have no tents allowed but some people were able to get some tents for
the people to maybe have a dry place. We have not enough food. Only private people are here and two
organisations are allowed to do something for the people, to give them food, to give them a warm place
and whatever. It is a disaster.There are families and 250 children in Grande Synthe... While conditions here are extremely gruelling for adults, they’re actually dangerous for the kids... Médecins sans Frontières and Médecinsdu Monde are on hand to provide medical care to the migrants.
Louise Raffin, doctor, MSF (in French)
Most of our patients have infections brought on by the cold. We try to treat them and give them the
best care we can, but given that there’s no improvement in their living conditions, their coughs persist.
The people here are sick and suffering from exhaustion. Added to this are dental problems, treatments for chronic diseases, and injuries sustained by the migrants on their way here.
Mathieu Balthazard, head nurse, MSF (in French)
We’re doing what we can but we’ll never manage to provide these people with some degree of
humanity and dignity, as long as the government fails to support the migrants. On 11 January, MSF finally got the go-ahead to start work on a new site. A month from now, 2,500 people will be provided with decent accommodation.
Democratic Republic of Congo
MSF has been supporting Rutshuru hospital in the east of the country for the past 10 years.
The hospital is one of very few in North-Kivu, a region plagued by recurrent armed conflict.Jeannette’s mother brought her to the hospital in Rutshuru two weeks ago. Barely one-year old, the baby girl is severely malnourished. The malnutrition has caused swelling, but worse still, has resulted in a generalised infection. Intensive care nursing supervisor Bernard had to admit her to his unit.
Bernard Kwokwo Bugandwa, intensive care nursing supervisor, MSF (in French)
I think Jeannette got malnutrition because she was weaned too young and too fast. She’s barely one
and she’s already got a little brother. She wasn’t able to benefit long enough from breast milk, so very
quickly, at a very young age, she became severely malnourished.Patients with malnutrition are only a very small proportion of cases treated by Bernar