Metche: A hospital built from zero for Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad

A mother waits with her child in the admissions ward at the MSF Hospital in Metche, in eastern Chad, August 8, 2024. Metche camp hosts about 40,000 Sudan ese refugees who have fled violence in Darfur. Finbarr O’Reilly/VII Photo.

MSB205057

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Metche: A hospital built from zero for Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad

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Unique Identifier Code / URN MSB205057

Date taken / Date Recorded 08/08/2024 11:10 AM

Country Chad

Commissioning section MSF-SPAIN

Photographer / videographer / producer Finbarr O’Reilly

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

Formal Consent Copy available yes

Editor's rating ★★★ (F)

Maximum Size 3644px × 5464px 12.41 MB

Additional Information / Shotlist Over half a million Sudanese refugees have settled in eastern Chad since the outbreak of the war in April 2023. Around 50,000 of them are now in the camp of Metche, a remote area south of the border town of Adré. In the end of 2023, MSF first improvised a clinic for basic consultations with tents and, as more people arrived, we created a hospital from zero, setting up the drainage system, constructing concrete platforms to put in more resistant tents, doing the electrical work… At some point everyone in the Metche refugee camp was involved in helping to construct the hospital: including thousands of daily workers and the more than 500 local and international MSF staff.
In Metche, MSF runs all the classic hospital activities: from triage to the emergency room and observation, to pediatrics, neonatology, internal medicine, maternity, a laboratory, an operating theatre, and an inpatient therapeutic feeding center, which is currently the busiest department of all and keeps registering new admissions of malnourished children. This 115-bed hospital is the main secondary healthcare facility for about 200,000 people, including the refugees from Metche and the local communities, as well as people from nearby camps such as Allacha and Arkoum.