The high point of the summer, for those involved in HIV-AIDS, was the Vienna AIDS conference – a perfect mix of evidence, policies, and politics. While some of the scientific papers presented were fascinating, what interested me most was the platform the conference provided for different stakeholders to come together and put the tensions that […]
Category: MSF
Mit Philips: No time to quit on HIV/AIDS funding
Here in Europe, HIV has virtually gone off the radar. It has been reduced to a chronic but eminently treatable disease that affects relatively small numbers of people, neither a major threat nor a major challenge. In Africa, however, it is a completely different story. […]
Paul McMaster: Everythin’s gonna be all right in Haiti?
We arrive in Haiti during the second night after the earthquake, and the scenes of destruction and devastation are overwhelming. We are silent as we went our way through the street rubble and collapsed buildings to set up our emergency surgical facilities. An estimated 200,000 are already dead and a similar number of casualties lie […]
Kiran James Jobanputra: Escape
It is sad, it never ceases to be sad, working in hospitals. Working with the mothers, their fatigued, careworn faces, the infrequent tears, the resigned, long-suffering poise, concealing hearts that are heaving with sadness. The world feels sad some days, a palpable sadness like a cloud spreading out from the feverish body of the sick […]
Kiran James Jobanputra: A world without MSF
It’s hard to contemplate Bunia without MSF. Bon Marché (the MSF hospital) is truly an institution – everyone I meet has either worked there or been a patient there – usually both. […]
Kiran James Jobanputra: first days in DRC
When you are accustomed to living in closed compounds you develop a long-distance stare; a meditative gaze you adopt automatically when left to yourself. This abstracted state serves two purposes. It allows you to take a little break, to escape for a moment without physically leaving the property, and it helps you overlook the razor […]
Philipp du Cros: A Momentous Day?
Mr S looked calm and somewhat bemused by the commotion. He had twice unsuccessfully undergone standard treatment for tuberculosis (TB) and had been taking antiretrovirals for HIV for over a year—he was used to medications and health workers. But today was different. It was the first day of his multidrug-resistant tuberculosis treatment, and four staff […]
MSF doctor Caroline Forwood on kala azar in India
The music is loud tonight, layers of competing sounds, horns and wind instruments, a screeching female voice on a tannoy system then a man with a better trained voice, car horns and shouting. The 11pm train from Patna must be able to sense the competition and is blasting a longer than usual announcement of its […]
Joe Jacob: Working for MSF in Kashmir
My name is Joseph Jacob and I am a trainee radiologist at Kings College Hospital, London. In early 2009, I was given the opportunity through a sabbatical, to return to work with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, or Doctors without Borders) – whom I had previously worked for in Darfur in 2006-7. Though I chose a […]
BMJ/MSF Christmas appeal: Philip du Cros on his work as a TB programme implementer
My name is Philipp du Cros and I am a doctor working as a tuberculosis (TB) programme implementer for Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) UK. What does that mean? My work involves visiting MSF programmes and helping them to start providing or improve existing TB services. […]