MSF Photo Blog

Photo: Gaël Turine

Brussels – November18, 2009
A kosovar family eats lunch at the soup kitchen organised by CIRÉ and Vluchtelingenwerk Vlaanderen at the Saint-Roch church in Brussels.
At this moment, more than 1,000 asylum seekers have nowhere to go and survive in the streets, with winter rapidly approaching.

Photo: Erik Refner

El Geneina, West Darfur – November 2004
A little girl is running though the streets of El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state in Sudan.

Photo: Sebastiao Salgado / Amazonas

Kassala, Sudan – 1985
A biblical looking scene, a mother with her children in search of food and shelter in the camp of Wad Sherifad, near the town of Kassala, which contained over 70.000 refugees at the time. In total, some 600,000 Ethiopians fleeing drought, famine and fighting in their country had found refuge in Sudan.

Photo: Michael Goldfarb

Mweso, North Kivu – October 20, 2009
A woman carries a load of firewood with her child balanced on top as she walks along a dirt road in the village of Mweso in North Kivu Province.

Photo: Eddy Van Wessel

Ingushetia, October 2003
Children doing gymnastics in one of the settlements for internally displaced people (IDP) coming from Chechnya. Many of the IDPs in Ingushetia were housed in spontaneous settlements, or kompaktniki. Often sub-divided warehouse spaces, former factories or roughly fabricated plywood containers, the kompaktniki were in a pitiful condition.

Photo: Robin Meldrum

Nyanzale, North Kivu – September 15, 2009
In Kikuku IDP camp near Nyanzale. Three days before this photo, the camp had been scene of a 4-hour gun battle at night. All the inhabitants of the camp fled down into the valley and, when they returned the next day, many found the few possessions they had brought with them to the camp had been looted.

Photo: Eymeric Laurent-Gascoin

Koysha Shewkare – July 2008
Koysha Shewkare, in the area of Wolayita (SNNP region), Kindo Didaye district.

Photo: Jodi Bieber

North West Frontier Province – September 19, 2009
An infant dozes on a stretcher in a fan-cooled tent at the MSF run cholera treatment centre at the Mardan Medical Complex, in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, while older women peer into structure housing 12 of 65 beds. Between June and October 2009, MSF treated a total of 1 611 patients at the centre and about a third of the patients had to be put on intravenous rehydration immediately to save them. Young children remain most at risk of the diseases that is endemic to the region.

Photo: Spencer Platt

Dadaab, Kenya – August 22, 2009
A boy stands beside scavenging birds feeding of carcasses at a slaughter house in Dadaab, the world’s biggest refugee complex, on the border with Somalia. An estimated 5,000 people arrive monthly to the camps, which are operated by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). The camps have been in operation for since 1991 and are currently home to some 289,500 inhabitants.

Photo: Anonymous

Myanmar – November 2008
A woman and her child take some rest in the MSF clinic. MSF staff assists thousands of HIV patients: Services include counseling, testing, treatment of opportunistic infections, nutritional support, mother to child prevention, health education and most importantly antiretroviral treatment.

Photo: Moises Saman

Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo – September 2009
A dirt road leading to the Bulange IDP camp housing over 10,000 displaced people outside of Goma, North Kivu, DRC. According to the UN, more than 800,000 people have been displaced in North and South Kivu provinces as a result of military operations against the Rwandan rebel group Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) and local militia allies since January 2009.

Photo: Javier Roldan

Jamaame hospital, southern Somalia – July 2009
The hospital was opened in March 2007. A 55 beds hospital, located nearly 30 kms North of Kismayo. Activities include Nutrition, maternity, general medicine and emergency care. In 2009, there was an average of 4 000 consultations and 140 admissions per month. In terms of nutrition an average of 260 kids have been treated every month in ambulatory while 90 more sever cases had to be admitted every month.

Photo: Michael Goldfarb

Muheto, North Kivu – October 2009
A twelve-month-old boy weighing just five kilograms cries during an examination at an MSF feeding center in Muheto, North Kivu, DRC, October 15, 2009. The severely malnourished child, born in an IDP camp, returned to his home viallge with his mother only last week. She had been unable to feed him properly during their displacement.

Photo: Eymeric Laurent-Gascoin

North West Frontier Province of Pakistan – May 2009
Patients in the waiting area of the Basic Health Unit, Peshawar district. MSF has been supporting basic health units and carrying out mobile clinics in areas where there is a high concentration of displaced people. Out patient clinics have also been set up in camps. In June, an average of 3000 primary health care and ante natal consultations were carried out each week in all MSF projects for the displaced in the region.

Photo: Julie Rémy

Niangara, Oriental Province, DR Congo – September 2009
Centre of Africa monument in Niangara facing the ruins of the ancient Niangara tribunal of first instance for Bas and Haut-Uélé. Which was feared and nicknamed Niangara ‘cata’ during the Belgian colonisation.

Photo: Juan-Carlos Tomasi

Pariaman, Indonesia, – October 5, 2009
Pariaman, one of the most affected towns located approximately 50 kilometres north of Padang. In the surrounding rural areas, several villages have been completely destroyed by landslides. The latest official estimate is of 704 dead with possibly 1,000 to 3,000 missing almost a week after a powerful earthquake hit the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

Photo: Cristina de Middel

Mumbai, India – August 2009
A patient undergoing treatment for MDRTB – Multi Drug Resistant Tuberculosis. Drugs used to treat TB are from the 1950s and a course of treatment for uncomplicated TB takes six months. Poor treatment management and adherence has led to new strains of bacilli that are resistant to one or more anti-TB drug. Multi-drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) is a serious form of this, identified when patients are resistant to the two most powerful first-line antibiotics. MDR-TB is not impossible to treat, but the required regimen causes many side-effects and takes up to two years.

Photo: Chris de Bode / Panos

Kitgum, northern Uganda – November 2004
Streetscene in Kitgum. For over 18 years now the Lords Resistance Army terrorises the Northern provinces of Uganda. Over 20.000 children have been abducted by this army. About 1.6 million people are internally displaced and live in camps in the North under a constant threat.

Photo: Alixandra Fazzina

Katanga Province, D.R. Congo – June 19, 2006
Displaced children peek through gaps in a doorway at the old hospital of Kananda in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Abandoned during the war, the hospital was a temporary home to over 50 families who fled violence in their home villages in northern Katanga.

Photo: Jaume Codina

Carnot, Central African Republic – September 2009
South-eastern Central African Republic currently faces a severe nutritional emergency. The crisis in the gold and diamond sector, on which many of the region inhabitants depend, has been the last straw for an already highly vulnerable population. Alerted by the local authorities, the Médecins Sans Frontières teams have opened four feeding centres in one month in Carnot, Boda, Nola and Gandoula and implemented a number of outpatient treatment programmes in the area.

Photo: Spencer Platt / Getty Images

Dadaab, Kenya – August 2009
A woman sits a local police station in Dadaab, the world’s biggest refugee complex, on the border with Somalia. The Dadaab refugee complex in northeastern Kenya consists of three separate camps – Dagahaley, Ifo, and Hagadera. An estimated 5,000 people arrive monthly to the camps. The vast majority of the residents have fled ongoing violence in neighboring Somalia.

Photo: Florent Retailleau

North Kivu Province, DR Congo – July 2009
Since the Congolese army launched an offensive against the FDLR rebels in early 2009, the fighting has moved into the northern and western regions of North Kivu province. Hundreds of thousands of people are on the run, fleeing a war that rages in eastern Congo.

Photo: Michael Goldfarb

Ahwar, Yemen – December 2008
Two Somali women refugees wait for a consultation with an MSF psychological counselor at clinic in Ahwar after surviving a dangerous two-day journey in overcrowded smugglers’ boats from northern Somalia.

Photo: Dragan Lekic

Paris, France – August 2009
The mayor of Paris has decided to end the nocturnal occupation in the Villemin Square in the tenth arrondissement of Paris. This garden has been the site of squatting by hundreds of mostly Afghan refugees since the closure of the Sangatte center near Calais. Hundreds of Afghans are currently living in deplorable conditions in Paris; some are in transit, others are applying for asylum in France.

Photo: Espen Rasmussen / Panos

Cox´s Bazar, Bangladesh, June 30 2009.
Some of the Rohingya live along the beach on the road between Cox´s Bazar and the Kutupalong makeshift [refugee] camp. They try to earn a little money by fishing. There are thought to be around 200,000 to 400,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh today.

Photo: MSF

Agadez, Niger – September 8, 2009
Following four days of heavy rains in Niger’s northern Air Mountains, severe floods have wreaked havoc in the city of Agadez on Tuesday, September 1. MSF teams already present in the city started providing emergency assistance in order to meet the urgent needs of the affected population.

Photo: Venus Veldhoen

Sudan, Nasir – April 2008
Nyabuol’s baby was ill, so she came to the MSF hospital in Nasir. She had just enough money for the boat trip to get there. Walking for two days with two young children was impossible, so now she sells water to earn money for the trip home.

Photo: Tim Dirven

Pol-I-Khumri, Afghanistan – December 2001
A checkpoint of the Northern Alliance at the entrance of Pol-I-Khumri, a village between Mazar-I-Shariff and Kunduz.

Photo: Didier Lefevre / Imagesandco.com

Bamiyan, Afghanistan – February 2002
These men and their families fled the Taliban threat. For two years, from village to village. Their houses have been destroyed, their fields mined. They’re awaiting the end of winter to go back to their village and start reconstruction.

Photo: Chris Maluszynski

Lampedusa, Italy – December 2004
The small island of Lampedusa south of Sicily belongs to Italy, but lies closer to Africa than Europe. About 10 000 boat migrants from different African countries arrived here in 2004. In the autumn, Italian authorities started returning the migrants to Libya without processing their requests for asylum.