MSF hands over activities to local medical providers after one year of assistance in flood hit areas
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2025-02-22 18:49:23
Medicine Sans Frontiers (MSF), an international medical humanitarian organization, has decided to hand over its nutrition, malaria and cutaneous leishmaniasis activities in flood-hit areas to regional health authorities and local non-governmental organisations.
“After providing assistance for over one year, we have now handed these activities over to local medical providers,” says Rinako Uenishi, Project Coordinator MSF.
In a press statement issued on Wednesday, Rinako said MSF was an emergency medical humanitarian organisation that mainly intervened when there were critical needs.
“In flood-hit areas especially in Dadu district of Sindh, where access to healthcare in remote rural areas remains a challenge, our teams responded to medical needs during the emergency phase and in the aftermath of the 2022 devastating floods”, she said.
In June 2022, the provincial Ministry of Health asked MSF to start cutaneous leishmaniasis activities following an outbreak in the area, she recalled.
Within a few weeks of setting up, Pakistan was hit by catastrophic flooding and Sindh where Dadu district was located, was one of the worst-hit areas.
MSF quickly adapted and expanded its existing activities to provide emergency healthcare, access to clean water and sanitation and gave mental health support to people affected by the floods.
MSF teams distributed five million litres of water and installed 50 hand pumps between September 2022 and February 2023.
In Johi, MSF installed a reverse osmosis plant to purify the saline water to ensure pure drinking water was available.
Two mobile teams were organized to immediately provide medical care. Over a six-month period, MSF carried out 27,726 primary healthcare consultations in Dadu, Johi, KN Shah and Mehar districts, along with distributing 27,000 non-food items, including hygiene kits, and 82,480 tents, blankets and kitchen kits.
As the emergency phase came to an end, MSF medical teams launched new activities to address acute malnutrition among children under the age of five and treat the rise in malaria cases due to pools of stagnant water left over by the floods.
By November 2023, after treating 2,034 children under five years and 299 pregnant and lactating women, MSF handed over its nutrition activities to the People’s Primary Healthcare Initiative (PPHI).
MSF treated 12,108 people for malaria, then donated its malaria drug stock and rapid diagnostic tests to the Ministry of Health so patients with malaria can be diagnosed and treated at the health facilities.
