Contact CU Independent News Staff Writer Charlotte Bowditch at Charlotte.Bowditch@colorado.edu.
You often hear about the work of Doctors Without Borders in the context of vast, threatening epidemics turned pandemics. However, the objectives of Doctors Without Borders far surpasses just infectious disease management. The mission of Doctors Without Borders, or Médecins Sans Frontières, its original French name, is “to provide medical relief to victims of war, disease and natural or man-made disaster, regardless of race, religion, or political affiliation.” MSF has teams in over 60 countries in the most remote and dangerous parts of the world, working to diminish the effects of hunger, violence, and neglect.
Suzanne Ceresko, a graduate of University of Colorado-Boulder, came to speak in Boulder on April 5 about her long-time work in the field with Doctors Without Borders/MSF. She has recently traveled to dangerous, impoverished places including Syria, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Malawi. Although she is not a doctor, she works as a logistician, which leaves her to plan and execute rescue missions, as well as find solutions to unexpected hindrances during her work.
During an extreme malnutrition crisis in Ethiopia, Ceresko was responsible for administering supplies and nourishment to the people of a remote town. Unfortunately, due to the rainy season, the road had collapsed into mud and the service team was not able to reach the community in need. Later on, they decided to use a team of 50 horses to get the medical supplies and nourishment packages to the community suffering from extensive malnutrition.
In South Sudan, she helped lead a team to set up a refugee camp to house 20,000 refugees who were victims of civil war and extreme political unrest in the nearby regions. The team quickly saw the turnout grow into 40,000 refugees looking to seek shelter through the camp. That left them with the challenges of finding a way to create extra space in a camp that had now become an island due to the rainy season, a clean water shortage, and a sudden measles outbreak.
During her talk, Ceresko mentioned the fact that even though her job was challenging, the people of the countries where she serves are facing extreme adversity. Whether these people are facing malnutrition, warfare, disease or sexual violence, the ramifications, mentally and physically, are dire.
According to MSF, at least one in three women worldwide have experienced sexual violence, and in 2014, MSF treated over 11,000 victims of sexual violence through 91 projects.This number neglects to account for the victims who do not report their assaults because it is not culturally acceptable, or who face sexual violence daily and don’t feel as though it is important enough to report. This is a huge problem in South Sudan, and women in refugee camps are often even more vulnerable to sexual violence, often times at the hands of rogue soldiers.
Although MSF aims to help a great deal of suffering people in impoverished areas, there are some things they cannot prevent. For example, The Kunduz Trauma Center in Afghanistan remains in shambles after weeks of intense warfare and U.S. airstrikes that have made it difficult to set up new missions in Afghanistan. The staff on this mission recounted the events after the fact.
“As soon as the simple distractions of daily Australian life momentarily pause, my mind immediately wanders back to Kunduz, Afghanistan,” wrote Kathleen Thomas, an intensive care doctor from Australia, in a recent piece for the Huffington Post. “I am engulfed in a gaping dark pit, which holds me captivated while I try to excavate its contents. It’s not the horrific scenes from that early morning of the attack that I can make out; it’s not the deafening sound of the relentless airstrikes; it’s not the sights of partially amputated limbs, or the permeating smell of blood. It is a feeling of incomprehensible loss and grief that extends down into that bottomless pit.”
Ceresko said it is important to fund Doctors Without Borders/MSF by donating, in order to help them build up under-served nations. MSF is constantly working to get new teams in areas of the world that are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance.
