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Among the first international aid workers to reach ground zero on the Indonesian island of Sumatra were the doctors and nurses of MSF. When they arrived at the one functioning hospital in Sigli, on the east coast, there was only a single, volunteer surgeon on hand. "Our hospital was crippled," says Dr. Taufik Mahdi, director of the 35-bed unit. "Most of our doctors and nurses were too traumatized to work or left to look for loved ones missing after the tsunami." That first day the MSF team performed six operations, and it hasn't stopped since. "The minute...
Spending a day at the hospital with the MSF team reveals the scope of the crisis. "Oh, man, this one is really bad," an Australian doctor shouts as he approaches the operating theater. He's holding up the arm of a man whose limb looks like a shank of lamb. The elbow is essentially gone, and the lower and upper arm is barely held together by a few sinewy strings of muscle and flesh. Though paint is peeling off the walls and a layer of grime covers many of the hospital's windows, Sigli's only hospital is fairly clean...
...cluster of remote villages three hours' drive from the nearest paved road or flush toilet. Calcite in Gongdong's water causes kidney stones in residents and a lack of iodine in their diet makes goiters common. For the past six years, the French aid agency M?decins Sans Fronti?res (MSF) has trained the village doctors and midwives to treat minor injuries and illnesses with a basic stock of drugs, while referring serious cases to a township hospital. In addition, MSF introduced a payment scheme that seemed to work: it requires each village to classify locals according to whether they...
...system eliminates the incentive for doctors to jack up medicine prices to cover their expenses. Yet the project costs MSF just 25? per person per year?a tiny investment that has brought basic health care to some 8,500 people. "We wanted to create a grassroots example of a practical program that works," says Yves Marchandy, who runs the program. But the project is scheduled to end in June. Local authorities don't plan to continue it because they don't have the budget. "The hospital authorities are overly focused on turning a profit," says Marchandy...
...MSF, the world's largest independent international relief agency, works in developing countries to provide aid to victims of natural disasters, epidemics and armed conflict, as well as to many without sufficient health care...