Doctors Without Borders – one woman’s story about serving in Iraq - Women's Agenda

Doctors Without Borders – one woman’s story about serving in Iraq

Médecins Sans Frontières (aka Doctors Without Borders) is the worldwide independent organisation that provides humanitarian medical aid to people in crisis.

Over 100 Australian and New Zealanders every year travel to some of the most dangerous countries in the world to provide much needed medical care to people in desperate need.

Kate White is a nurse from Brisbane who just got back from Iraq, where she was she was working with local and MSF staff to set up mobile medical units servicing villages where high numbers of displaced people are living.

She’s only been back in Australia for about a month and is still adjusting, she says the most difficult thing about being home again is knowing that her colleagues and the people they’re helping are still there.

It’s very tough – you feel like you’re abandoning people. The longer you working with MSF the longer you get to know people, so you really develop bonds with them and you feel terrible leaving them behind when you come home.

I stay in contact with them on a personal level, we just chat about life stuff, not work. The best you can do is try, as much as possible, to remember that you did do something to make a difference and move on from there.

The other issue she faces in coming home is trying to explain what it’s like in the Middle East to people living here.

The things that frustrate me the most is that we dehumanise people all over the world, this is the luck of the birth draw. We were just lucky to be born in Australia so we never have to face these things, people born in Iraq and Syria are just like your neighbour or your friend, they have the same lives and the same feelings as any of us.

They were just like you and I, they had a house, a tv, a car, they had jobs and their kids were at school, they led a life very similar to ours and then one day they just had to get up and leave with nothing more than they could carry. Could you image what that would be like?

Kate is a medical coordinator, responsible for the start up phase of the program, so she was involved with the early assessment team determining the needs of the area and then assisted with implementing the project, based mostly around the Kurdish area of Iraq.

The units face a range of different health issues, mostly associated with living rough, many people are living in buildings with no sanitation, so respiratory tract infections and digestive problems are high on the list. Another common issue they see is a disease call cutaneous leishmaniasis, which is caused by a particular sand-fly bite, the larvae gets under the skin and causes lesions. It is endemic in the region, but the displaced people are so much more susceptible because they don’t have access to clean water or sanitation.

They have also recently extended the program to include mental health issues in the refugee camps around the area.

She says that while there are still some local doctors and hospitals operating in Iraq, most of the refugees and displaced people can’t get through all the check points around the villages, either because they have no access to transport, or because they are simply not allowed through the checkpoints.

Women and children, as is always the case in conflict, suffer very specific health problems.

The biggest one that there are so many families with no men around, too many off them have just disappeared, either in the fighting or they were killed or imprisoned. So those women are left with no provider or means of earning income. It’s not just the stress of fleeing their homes and not knowing what happened to their fathers and husbands and brothers, it’s also that they then can’t provide for the family they have left.

Breastfeeding was a big issue. Many women in the area don’t breastfeed, or sometime mothers have died or disappeared, and there is no one to feed the baby. Without access to clean water and sanitation providing formula is dangerous, so we look at relactating programs.

It is possible for any woman to breastfeed, even if she hasn’t had children or is past menopause. You stimulate production by getting child to suckle and providing medication that stimulates production of breast milk. Many women get there and are able to breastfeed again. Where babies have lost their mothers and we can help another female member of family to feed the baby. It’s something we did a little it in Africa and it’s become much more common in Syria as the conflict grew.

As well as organising and setting up programs, Kate was also involved in ensuring the MSF staff were well supported.

Its difficult for international staff, but it’s actually far worse for local staff, many of them were displaced themselves not long ago, so watching people going though the same thing could be quite traumatic, and occasionally would see people they knew, and had them asking for help to get through checkpoints. They know they can’t do that, but it’s awful because they feel so helpless.

There is lots of support, both formal and informal. We do lots of debriefs, so everyone gets to talk about how they’re doing and ask for help if they need it. We also have psycho-social care people who provide group and one on one sessions with anyone who needs it.

Kate says she has always wanted to do humanitarian work, and MSF was so appealing, not just because of the real work they do and the places they go, but also because they have such a strong connection back to the rest of the world.

I really liked the idea of providing medical care and also being an advocate for people who otherwise don’t have a voice.

She said the response from the people they were there to help started out with desperation, they just wanted to get past another checkpoint and were begging for help with that, but after a while they understood why the MSF staff were there and were just grateful.

After a while they just start saying “you’re the only ones who see us and care about us”. They feel so lost and at least with us they see that someone knows what is happening to them and cares.

MSF Australia gets all from the community. Like any aid organisation they are always desperately in need of more. Not just to manage current programs and buy medical supplies, but also to ensure that they have the ability to respond instantly to crisis situations. As soon as a medical emergency occurs anywhere in the world they need to get on the ground immediately.

It saves lives, prevents bad situations getting worse, and we couldn’t do it without the everyday donors.

People who want to joining MSF as support workers can find information on the website. Most of their staff are medical workers, but they also need people to manage finance, administration, HR, logistics and supply chain managements. 

They work they do is vital, and the people who do it are amazing. Kate is one of many, but they all deserve our thanks and recognition for the difference they make to the lives of people in crisis. 

 


If you would like to donate to Médecins Sans Frontières, you can do it directly through their website.

 

 

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