BY STAFF REPORTER
ADDIS ABABA – Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) teams in southern Tigray, are running mobile clinics and have restarted some services at health centers in the towns of Hiwane and Adi Keyih, alongside staff from the Ministry of Health.
Between 18 December and 3 January 2021, MSF teams in Hiwane and Adi Keyih provided 1,498 medical consultations to people.
In eastern Tigray, it is supporting the hospital in Adigrat. When an MSF team arrived in the city on 19 December 2020, they found the hospital, which served a population of more than one million, had partially stopped functioning. Given the urgency of the situation, MSF sent oxygen cylinders and food for patients and their caretakers from Mekelle, 120 kilometers further south, and referred patients to Ayder hospital in the state’s capital city.
Since 23 December 2020, MSF medical teams have been running the hospital’s emergency room, as well as the medical, surgical, pediatric and maternity wards. They are also providing outpatient care for children under five. In total, MSF received 760 patients in the emergency room of Adigrat’s hospital from 24 December to 10 January 2021, indicated in the report.
An MSF doctor provides a consultation to a patient in Adigrat, in Tigray. In central Tigray, as far west as the towns of Adwa, Axum and Shire, the teams are providing some of the displaced people with basic healthcare and supporting health facilities which lack essential supplies such as medications, oxygen and food for patients as well as it also estimates that between three and four million people in central Tigray have no access to basic healthcare.
In the western towns of Mai-Kadra and Humera, it has provided support to some health centres and has been supporting up to 2,000 internally displaced people by providing medical services, supplying water, sanitation and hygiene products, and constructing emergency latrines. Most of the internally displaced people are no longer there.
MSF teams have provided healthcare to thousands of displaced people at the border of Amhara Region since November. They have also supported several health facilities with medical supplies and provided nutritional and mass casualty trainings to Ministry of Health staff. MSF is also responding to the needs of Ethiopian refugees across the border in Sudan.
The Ethiopian herald January 14/2021
