MSF teams contribute to the upgrading of the sanitation standards with the construction of latrines, as well as organising community health promotion activities, with the aim of increasing the awareness on health behaviour.
In East Darfur, MSF is working in Kario refugee camp, which hosts some 20,000 refugees from South Sudan. Teams coordinate outbreaks, and organise vaccination campaigns against communicable diseases such as measles.
Tawila, in North Darfur, is home to almost 75,000 internally displaced people. MSF teams provide much-needed support in the overwhelmed health facility where malnutrition, diarrhoeal diseases and malaria are the common referrals.
Neglected Diseases
Sudan has the highest rate of kala azar (visceral leishmaniasis) in East Africa, nearly 70% of national cases are concentrated in Al-Gedaref. This parasitic disease, which is transmitted by sandflies, has a 95 %mortality rate if left untreated.
MSF provides free diagnosis and case management support to hospitals in this region, organises awareness-raising activities in the community, and conducts training for local health professionals.
In Al Kashafa,MSF's hospital functions as a referral point for other camps, and it has the only nutritional stabilisation centre in the area. The most serious medical cases are referred to Kosti hospital, 80 kilometres away.
Nearly half of all consultations are for local people living around Al Kashafa camp, which includes the host Sudanese community and refugees from the camps. Before MSF arrived, the local community had very few alternatives when it came to medical care and the MSF hospital has become a point of reference for the local population as well. MSF aims to encourage the local population to seek out professional medical care, rather than relying on traditional medicine, by providing free medical care.