11-7 | Many are dying from malnutrition We have recently returned from a visit to Nigeria’s Borno State. Amid the hunger and displacement, we saw that something else was terribly wrong. In the three places that we visited, there were hardly any children under 5 years of age. Almost none. They were missing from the therapeutic feeding centers that we had set up to treat the malnutrition that often afflicts them. They were missing from our inpatient wards.
9-5 | Nyajuba (Nya) 5 years old was playing with her 8 year old sister near their home when shooting started. Sensing danger, her sister picked Nya up and together they ran to the bush. As they ran, Nya was hit by a stray bullet on her right arm. Admist the panic and fearing she was dead; Nya’s sister dropped her and ran for her life. Nya then lay alone, bleeding profusely until eventually falling unconscious. Nya spent two nights in the bush alone as her grandmother searched the surrounding area for her.
7-27 | More than 500,000 people are living in catastrophic and unsanitary conditions in a number of villages and towns across Borno state, northeastern Nigeria, according to Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which is calling for the provision of emergency aid for those people in immediate danger. “In Banki, as in a number of other areas, people have almost no access to humanitarian aid,” says MSF’s emergency programme manager Hugues Robert, who has just returned from this town near the Cameroonian border.
7-21 | In the week following fighting in Juba, teams from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) have treated more than 2700 patients in four clinics across the capital city of South Sudan. The organization is also supplying clean drinking water in Juba and performing surgeries for people more seriously wounded during the violence. On Tuesday 12 July, MSF opened a clinic at the St Theresa Church, in Kator, where thousands of people were taking refuge.
7-14 | MSF’s teams in Juba are now responding to some of the medical needs that arose following the fighting and we continue to look at ways to provide people with more assistance. Yesterday a team of four ran mobile clinics at the St Theresa Church where 2,500 people were taking refuge. The team focused on those most in need of medical care and treated 115 people, including 82 children. The main medical needs included lower respiratory tract infections, fever and diarrhea.