Important survival medical help for children in Chad
Watch this short film from Doctors without Borders: Film from Am Timan
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Desperate poverty – high rate of child death
Chad is one of the poorest countries in the world. Draught regularly destroys the harvest and many families don’t have enough to eat. Political instability and continued armed conflict have destroyed most of the infrastructure and many people have been dislodged within the country. There are not enough clinics, doctors or nursing staff and the population has little access to medical care. This threatens the children most of all: many girls and boys die from illnesses which are usually easy to treat, such as diarrhea or malaria. The death rate for mothers and children is much too high to be accepted. Chad has the second highest death rate worldwide.
2012: A particularly hard year
In 2012, the situation in the country was made much worse by an acute food crisis. The rains didn’t come and the crops dried out in the fields. This is very dangerous for small children: when they go hungry or their nutrition is too one-sided, they become susceptible to serious illnesses. Particularly hard hit is the region around the city Am Timan in the southeast of Chad. Already at the beginning of 2012 one out of five children suffered from malnutrition in many villages.
Doctors without Borders helps in the affected regions
Doctors without Borders runs the children’s clinic in Am Timan’s regional hospital, including a children’s intensive care unit and a station for the inpatient treatment of children with severe malnutrition. The staff from Doctors without Borders also oversees births and treats patients with HIV or tuberculosis. There is a special program which deals with the prevention of the mother-to-child transfer of HIV.
In addition, Doctors without Borders supports nine health centers around Am Timan. The staff also travels to remote villages and examines and treats children who would otherwise not have access to medical help. Doctors without Borders treats boys and girls suffering from malnutrition on an outpatient basis with therapeutic convenience food. The teams bring those children with a serious illness to the hospital in Am Timan.
There Doctors without Borders admitted over 2,200 small patients to the children’s clinic in 2012. In addition the organization treated more than 7,700 girls and boys in the region suffering from malnutrition. Due to the acute food crisis, the teams have opened three further nutrition centers in addition to the project in Am Timan: here they have treated around 8,900 children suffering from malnutrition.
Vaccinations protect against life threatening illnesses
Because the people of Chad suffer from poor health, epidemics often break out. Children are hit the hardest: especially if they suffer from malnutrition, girls and boys don’t have enough body defenses to withstand dangerous illnesses like mumps. This is the reason Doctors without Borders executes mass vaccinations. For example, in March 2013, the teams are planning to vaccinate 250,000 children and adults against mumps and meningitis around Am Timan.
Text: Doctors without Borders, February 2013 (Translated by Tereska-Foundation)
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