(via trublood)
Ethiopia: “There Is Still So Much to Improve”
In early 2011, there were some 40,000 Somali refugees in Ethiopia. By the end of 2011, that number had more than tripled, to 142,000, following a mass exodus triggered by a terrible drought that killed crops and herds in a country already wracked by 20 years of conflict. The numbers alone, however, do not tell much about the days, or even weeks, Somalis spend walking to reach and cross the border with barely any food or water. It does not reveal the dire malnutrition affecting the children in the camps, nor does it express the effort made by humanitarian agencies to fight hunger and exclusion and reduce emergency levels of child mortality. José Luis Dvorzak, an MSF doctor in Liben, reminds us that there is still much work to be done.
You have worked as a doctor at different times in the past two years in the Liben camps.
I first arrived in June 2010. There were three international workers and 35 national employees. We carried out nutritional activities in the two camps, in Bokolmayo and Malkadida (40,000 refugees) and the Dolo Ado health center. The second time I arrived in September 2011, the change had been enormous: we had 50 international workers and over 800 national employees. By then, new camps had been opened, Kobe and Hillaweyn, each sheltering 25,000 new refugees that had arrived from Somalia in the worst of conditions, with very high mortality rates. At one point there had been up to 13,000 people admitted in our feeding program. In September, after months conducting a nutritional intervention, we managed to reduce mortality to levels below the emergency threshold.
How would you describe the medical situation endured by the population at present?
We still have children admitted in our stabilization centers suffering from severe malnutrition complicated with other diseases such as pneumonia or diarrhea—some 45 kids (during the emergency peak this figure rose to over a constant 150) weekly. The most common pathologies amongst the population are respiratory infections, diarrhea, intestinal parasites, and skin diseases. Currently, we are also implementing mental health and epidemiological surveillance programs using community health workers.
Read the rest of the interview with José Luis Dvorzak.
Photo: Ethiopia 2011 © Michael Tsegaye
An MSF staff member uses a feeding tube to treat a malnourished child in Liben’s Hiloweyn camp.
The Hipster Libertarian: Why we should not bomb Iran
Ignorance: I’m worried about Iran. They are building a nuclear weapon, then they will blow up Israel and we will have even more terrorist attacks on our country. We most protect ourselves. The only way to do that is to attack Iran before they attack us.
Knowledge: Why do you think…
Radical cats. Meet Occupy DC’s feline protester.
Photo taken by Duncan Hill. Check out his photography site here!
You can view the rest of The Political Notebook’s project to gather photography, documentation and experiences from the OWS movements nationwide. (I love photos of protest signs…) Check out the Call for Submissions page and email your photos to me at torierosedeghett@gmail.com!
(via loveisntalwayson-time)
Yes, there is rape in the military, just as there is in civilian life. There is rape at home on military bases all over the United States, and also abroad. Being barred from combat jobs hasn’t kept it from happening. I spent three weeks in the hands of the “enemy” in Iraq as a prisoner, and I was not raped. Unfortunately, many of my fellow female soldiers were raped—sometimes by the very people who were supposed to “have their back.” Rape happens every day to women; giving women front-line combat jobs will not increase that threat.
Shoshana Johnson, a former POW in Iraq, argues in support of allowing women on the front lines, despite arguments like “rape.”
(via thepoliticalnotebook)
If anything, women have shown in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that they are not only fully capable; they have excelled. They have saved many men’s lives. And it did not damage unit cohesion. And if Rick Santorum doesn’t believe that, then he can volunteer, enlist, put on a uniform, and put his butt on the line and try it himself. He’s playing politics. He is saying something inflammatory because he thinks he’s going to get a certain population to give him money, and it’s a shame because America’s daughters are just as capable of doing their jobs as America’s sons, whether that’s at home as doctors and attorneys or in combat as convoy commanders. This is the 21st century. Get over yourself.
Tammy Duckworth (Iraq war vet, Congressional candidate, double amputee, former Black Hawk pilot) is her amazing self in an interview with The American Prospect. (via thepoliticalnotebook)
(via loveisntalwayson-time)
MSF Blogs: The Silent Cost of Child Malnutrition in DRC
Just as I was about to leave for the day, Steve, one of the nurses, asked me if I could see this one case before going. Beatrice (not her real name) was two years and seven months old when she arrived in our pediatric hospital tent in Kimbi Lulenge, South Kivu, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). A quick glance at the prostrate child in the dim circle of light cast by the tent’s single bulb and I guessed she was another malaria case. Steve shook his head. “Non, docteur. C’est un nouveau cas de malnutrition” (“No, doctor. This is a new malnutrition case”).
I quickly felt the child’s feet—icy cold. A careful look at Beatrice showed that all the curves and dimples of a healthy child’s face had shrunk, leaving the forbidding lines of a woodblock print. Beatrice was alert, but silent, which formed an ominous void amid the children crying in the rest of the tent. There was a glint of anxiety in her rheumy eyes that grew dimmer as she seemed to fall into it.
I gently pulled back the cotton wrap. The malnutrition had ravaged her skin, causing it to flake off, leaving behind weeping sores across her arms, legs and chest. There was no healthy protest when a drip was placed in her arm.
The nursing staff went into action. They gave her glucose to prevent low blood sugar, antibiotics through the drip to fight off infection; they advised her mother to keep her warm, as hypothermia takes the lives of many of these children at night. Careful fluid management and gentle refeeding was started: give too little and the child will succumb to dehydration and shock; too much and the child will die of heart failure.
Treating a malnourished child is complex. It is not simply a matter of doling out cups of milk and packets of peanut paste when a child like Beatrice finds her way into our tent, tied to her mother’s back after she has walked a day to get to our hospital or, if she’s lucky, on the back of a relative’s motorbike along the treacherous dirt roads.
(via loveisntalwayson-time)
