Under Reported Issues
Margaret Moes

On behalf of EuRA I attended a presentation by MSF given for sponsors at the media club ‘Frontline’ in London; this is a club for war correspondents and photographers.  They occupy an impressive building near Paddington station.  The meeting room was hung with black and white pictures taken by journalists in war zones and disaster areas around the world.  From photographs of militant trainees with the look of war on their faces to grief stricken mothers that just have lost a child to malnutrition. Very impressive, and extremely moving. 

There were two presentations.  

The first speaker was Dr Frauke Jochims.  She is in charge of, and responsible for implementing all TB (tuberculosis) related activities of MSF’s work in Angola, Darfur and Uzbekistan.  Dr Jochims started with explaining what tuberculosis actually is and why it mainly affects the lower classes of society. While many people in the West consider TB a disease of bygone era, the devastating human toll by the disease is increasing worldwide, particularly in developing countries with high HIV prevalence.  Every year, TB kills nearly 2 million people while an estimated 9 million develop the disease.  An additional 450,000 new cases of multi-drug resistant TB are seen every year.  Even in the West it now is very much on the increase with more cases reported every year.  Dr Jochims who is originally from Germany joined MSF in 2000 as a project doctor based in a small MSF supported slum-hospital in Monrovia, Liberia where she was responsible for diagnostics and treatment of TB in children.  She completed two further missions in 2004 and 2005 to South and West Dafur, Sudan.

The second speaker, Dr Kirsten Brown, spent 9 months working in Somalia in 2006, one of the most dangerous countries where MSF works.  Based in Galcayo, south central Somalia, she worked in the only hospital for miles around, providing emergency and primary health care to the local population.  Her stories were very moving and not always very easy.  To give an example when women were having a baby and needed blood transfusion, permission was needed from the men of their clan.  When permission was granted the men of the clan had to be tested for the right blood group and blood taken from them.  Often mother, child or mother and child would have died before the transfusion could be given.  It was not possible during the 9 months for Kirsten to go anywhere outside the hospital compound and when visiting sick people outside 2 guards would be with her to protect her.  This doctor is not older than 30 and has already given so much voluntarily, leaving behind the comforts of easy life in England; to listen to her story was quite humiliating. Kirsten now works as a General Practitioner in Hackney which is one of the poorest areas in London.

All in all a very interesting evening; the subjects discussed will stay with me for quite some time.  Amazing to see the enthusiasm of all the workers. The good that is done by these enthusiastic, interesting doctors has made me realise that every penny we have given at EuRA is very well spent and I hope it may continue! To date EuRA has raised €6360 of which nearly €600 was raised on line through www.justgiving.com/EURA 

I am sure we can do better in 2007, please let’s work on it.  Thank you.