Webclip on the MSF intervention in Philippines after the Rai typhoon.

SCRIPT

TEXT:
Bilabid
Philippines

Marie Kris Yurtes
Local official

Subtitles:

It felt like the wind would pick us up.
We could barely walk.

When I got home my husband said
our house was gone,

it had fallen apart.

Other houses were gone too.

It's all been destroyed.

The important thing is
that we are all alive.

TEXT:
Queencel Catulay
Resident

Subtitles:
The storm was so strong,

I thought we were all going to die.

The flood, the seawater,

it must have been three metres high
at the evacuation centre.

TEXT:
Typhoon Rai devastated
the Philippines
on 16 December 2021


Jonathan Pillejera
MSF logistician

Dinagat District Hospital
Philippines

Subtitles:

As soon as the boat docked,
we could see

houses broken up,
and the streets full of debris.

So far, the places
and the villages we visited

to assess their health facilities,

almost everything was destroyed.

It’s really damaged,
and really not usable.

TEXT:
MSF started an emergency
intervention in January.

Dr Reinan Reil P. Paulino
Dinagat Hospital medical officer

Subtitles:

The ones with head injuries,
or broken bones –

we refer them

because we don't have facilities
to do surgery here.

We refer them to a tertiary hospital

because we don't have laboratories.

The supply of medication is limited.

Doctors Without Borders,

they're doing their best to help us

with requests or other things we need,

like the boat to transport patients.

TEXT:
Chenery Ann Lim
MSF Emergency coordinator

Catadman
Philippines

Cagutsan
Philippines

Subtitles:

The difficulty here is that
going from one island to the other

we have to ride boats, and sometimes
the big boats cannot go in

because the islands are too small.

So they’re very difficult
areas to go to.

Health personnel are also affected,
so they can’t go to work.

We help the healthcare workers

and we also plan
to distribute relief goods,

or what we call
‘hygiene kit distribution’.

We’re also doing mobile clinics.

When we go sometimes to the island,

we’re the first medical team
that they’re actually seeing.

Sometimes there are a lot of patients

with upper respiratory
tract infections,

gastroenteritis…
It really varies a lot.

Sometimes, when we do
hygiene kit distribution

we also do consultations,
screening for nutrition,

to make sure that we really cover
the health needs.

So we’re providing
free healthcare services,

free medication
to the people in the islands.

Since the storm, there was
nothing else we could do

but look at our house and see
how we were going to fix it.

We will rise again, even if things
are like this now.

We cannot just sit around
and wait. We will recover.