I was born in the Dominican Republic. It was very difficult when I came to this world because I had a last minute change and came out of the womb feet first. I almost died and my mom almost did also but luckily I am here today. The doctors that treated me did not charge my family any money because they did their work voluntary.
Lidia at 6 months old
When I was little and my mom told me this story I always thought it was fascinating and thought that one day I wanted to be like those doctors and cure people.
When I was older I had to go to the hospital once again and it was not what I expected. They were people severely injured that had been waiting for hours. It was not a very sanitary place. That was when another idea came to mind and my plans were to hopefully become a doctor and be able to build a small clinic.
I ended up coming to the United States my dreams are still the same, I still would like to become a doctor. They just a little bit different. I hope one day I get to work for MSF because it's doing something that I like which is helping those in need the only way I can picture myself doing it. I think it is wonderful to not only help people but also to cure them.
What is TB? Tuberculosis is caused by a bacterium that spreads through the air, through cough or sneeze. It mainly affects the lungs and bones and also the nervous system. If other people have other diseases like HIV the tuberculosis virus can become even more active.
Symptoms of TB
- Persistent cough
- Fever
- Weight loss
- Chest pain
- Breathlessness
TB leads to the cause of death
with people with HIV
Diagnosis for TB
- Smear microscopy, the microscope examination of sputum or lung fluid, for the tuberculosis bacilli
- Testing is only accurate half of the time and even less accurate if the patient has HIV.
- MSF is continuing to try to find more appropriate accurate testings for TB.
"MSF vaccinated 75,100 people against meningitis in response to outbreaks in 2014"
Vast Majority of meningitis occur in Africa
Causes of Meningitis
Meningitis is highly contagious. People often carry the disease without knowing and no symptoms are shown. The decease is spread by coughing and sneezing. Bad living conditions and overcrowding living and conditions increase the rise of spreading the disease. Detailed Causes of Meningitis
Symptoms
- Fever
- Nausea
- Vomiting
- Photophobia
- Stiffness in neck
These disease is most likely to affect young
children and babies
Vaccinating against Meningitis Epidemics
Treating Meningitis
Antibiotics that can treat infection
- Penicillin
- Ampicillin
- Chloramphenicol
Massive vaccinations conducted by MSF help prevent the spread of the virus. MSF have prevented 70% of cases of meningitis in Africa.
There are 35 million people living with HIV/AIDS majority of them are located in Africa.
Causes of HIV: HIV is a sexually
transmitted disease and can be
passed on to babies by birth.
Symptoms of HIV
People show symptoms of HIV differently. Some will start showing symptoms after a month or so of being infected by the virus. Others would not get any symptoms for years.
MSF Diagnosing HIV
HIV testing can be very rapid, but the people that are infected in parts of Africa are not aware of the disease which makes it hard for the diagnosing process.
Treating HIV
Treatments now for HIV are way more successful then what they used to be before. A combination of drugs (ARVs) help fight the virus. ARVs allow people to have a longer life. Also ARVs help patients have a healthier life without their immune system shutting down.
Ebola survivors that suffered from mental health talking with counselors
MSF helps with epidemics, natural disasters, and many different things that can affect people's mental health. MSF provide different counselors along with psychologists or psychiatrist that help with the mental medical help of thousands of people.
One in 4 people in the world will suffer from mental health, living conditions has a lot do with it also
In 2014 MSF stuff helped 218,400
Individual and group counseling sessions for mental health. People in these places need mental health because of many reasons. The loss of family members due to natural disasters, trauma of sexual violence, being caught up in a war.
Malaria is a deadly mosquito disease. It's transmitted from person to person. Four main species of malaria parasite:
1) Plasmodium Falciparum
2) Plasmodium Malariae
3) Plasmodium Vivax
4) Plasmodium Ovale
Symptoms of Malaria
The symptoms occur 1 to 2 weeks after the infection. Pain, headaches, joint pain, fever, sweating, vomiting, coma. If malaria goes untreated, it can quickly cause death.
Diagnosing Malaria
Looking for parasites are looked under the microscope. But tests are not always available for everyone in certain places. Sometimes people tend to do diagnosis based on the symptoms but with so many diseases they are not very accurate. For more information regarding diagnosis : Health-line Malaria Diagnosis
Treating Malaria
Treatment of malaria is done through "ACTs"
"For plasmodium falciparum use of two or more drugs with different modes of action in combination is now recommended to provide adequate cure rate and delay development of resistance. Currently artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) is recommended for the treatment of malaria." Many places where MSF work ACT is available. Global need for malaria treatment is 300 to 500 million of treatment courses per year, but in 2006 only 90 million treatment courses accused. Health- Line Treatment for Malaria
Ebola is an infectious and generally and generally fatal disease marked by fever and several internal bleeding, spread through contact with infected body fluids by filovirus (Ebola Virus) whose normal host species is unknown (Link).
Spreads by
Blood products
Animal Insects bites or stings
By saliva
By touching contaminated surface.
Msf started treating Ebola since the start of the epidemic. They set out Ebola medical treatment centers, starting out with the countries that were the most affected which were Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone
Doctors Celebrating Ebola Free Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone MSF started activities to Ebola activities to help battle the epidemic. Sierra Leone was originally declared Ebola free in November 7th 2015 but later on they there happened to be another death. Early this year Leone was declared ebola free in March 17th 2016. MSF still has Non-ebola activities happening in Leone just to help with the health care system. More information after recovering from ebola Life after Ebola
Nurses Nurses are very important and needed for the organization. A registered nurse in MSF can have many different tasks. Nurses can operate a feeding center, be in charge of data collection, organization of the hospital, management on drug stocks and many more. A registered nurse practitioner has to be able to live through risky environments. To work in MSF for anyone should be something you like to do because you like helping people, not because you would like to travel. Getting a job in MSF could be harder than getting their first nursing job because of the requirements. The requirements which amongst those are the basic diploma and license requirement, two year work experience, and a two year international (traveling) work experience.
Surgeons in MSF also help with surgical organizations. They have to meet the requirement like everyone else. Have the 2 year experience in the field and also the international traveling experience. Surgeons are not advised in time since emergencies happen so they have be ready to go at all times. Should have experience in one of these two general trauma surgery or orthopedic surgery.
Wanting to work in MSF is something that should grow in you. You have to mentally prepared to work for MSF because it comes with different scenarios and surprises. You should understand that they may be risks working with MSF but it can be a life changing experience. One day I hope I’ll get to experience working for MSF.
Careful look at some of the countries where MSF work
Haiti
Even before the 2010 earthquake MSF was in Haiti trying to help people with their medical needs and help better their health programs. After the earthquake MSF opened a container hospital to treat people after the disaster, hospital which is still opened today. MSF has a unit that takes care of road accidents and patients with burns. They also have a unit that treats pregnant woman and have a section that treats pregnant woman that have cholera which is a deadly disease if it's not treated. MSF is always trying to prevent major cholera outbreaks to prevent the loss of so many lives.
Building new hospitals in Haiti
MSF rescuing immigrants
Italy
MSF helps immigrants and refugees in different parts of Italy. Recently they had to close down activities in Pozzallo Italy because of the conditions the patients were in. The way that these immigrants come to the hospital and show how they got treated was too extreme, MSF told authority that this had to change and nothing changed. The hospital was taking more people than its capacity and it was too much at once so MSF had to shut down the hospital. MSF did start operations in the Mediterranean sea to help these poor immigrants in May of 2015.
Italy's Immigrant Living Conditions
Chile
In 2010 when an earthquake with a magnitude of 8.8 hit Chile MSF was ready to start helping these people. MSF had doctors, nurses and logisticians on the ground to help them soon after the earthquake took place. People were sleeping in the streets because they were scared of sleeping inside do the aftershocks. MSF had psychologists to provide help for them. MSF staff also have to be ready to evacuate buildings for after chocks also.
The organization has worked with Kenya since 1987, helping treat HIV/AIDS, TB, maternity care, and giving assistance in the refugee camps.
Outpatient consultations
333,400
Patients on first-line ARV treatment
10,500
Patients treated after incidents of sexual violence
2,800
No. staff in 2014
603
2014 Expenditure
€17.4 million
Project Launch
MSF has helped many other countries with different medical problems, such as war related, natural disasters etc. These were just a few so you could understand how MSF works in different areas when it comes to giving these people medical help. For a longer list and being able to browse any country MSF is stationed that you would like to know more about click here.
To start of what is this organization? This is an organization composed of different health professionals and other experts that travel around the word to give medical help to people that don’t have enough funds, have suffered from war tragedies, epidemics, natural disasters, and armed conflicts and more. The goal of this organization is to assist these countries with whatever emergency they have with medical help. The different stations that are created by the organization stay in the country for a long time and help these communities grow.
War Tragedies
When we talk about war we often forget about the everyday people that are getting injured. This organization has helped people that have been caught in a war related zones. They need medical help for any injuries that they had suffered which can be from bombs, machete wounds and beatings and even sexual violations. MSF responds to Afghanistan Airstrike
Epidemics
Epidemics are very disastrous as you may know and this organization is always ready to save lives of anyone that is infected by a decrease. Sadly a lot of the epidemics out there happen to the poorest countries, where they have no money to afford any medical help. The doctors have a long list of people whose lives they have saved that were suffering from these infectious diseases.
MSF treating Ebola patients
Malnutrition
Malnutrition is a big cause of deaths of children under 5. Some countries including Africa and Asia have the biggest cases of malnutrition. The goal of these doctors was to help feed the appropriate food to these kids and take care of them. They started making care nutrition packages that contained nutritious foods for kids that were far in the countries.
More information about the cyclone Aila click this link : Cyclone Aila
Overall the goal of MSF is to save as much people as they can with the appropriate people for the different medical needs. Once they see that a country is getting better with what their issue was they close down any facilities and go to another country where the help is much needed so they can go save more lives.
