Santé

Chantal Autotte-Bouchard is a public health and tropical medicine nurse. She has been involved in various humanitarian crisis contexts, notably in sub-Saharan Africa, Haiti and India, before joining Première Urgence Internationale as Health Advisor at the organisation's headquarters. Back from a visit to Afghanistan, she shares her experience with us.

In November 2022, a number of villages in the Logone-et-Chari department in the Extreme North of Cameroon were continuously attacked by non-governmental armed groups. These incursions have led to the displacement of populations to neighbouring districts, with consequences for the health of all.

In a country that has been at war for eight years, where the health system is very fragile, Première Urgence Internationale is working to improve access to care, particularly by rehabilitating health facilities.

Acute and chronic malnutrition remains one of the major public health concerns in Sudan. To address emergency food and nutritional needs of families with children diagnosed with malnutrition in Gedaref, eastern Sudan, Première Urgence Internationale involves health volunteers from the community. Rogia is one of them.

Nearly 100 tons of medicines and medical equipment have been sent by plane to Kabul mid-December in a country where there is a shortage of medicines and where the humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate.

In a country torn apart by war and where the humanitarian situation is dramatic, women and girls face increased health risks. To enable them to access care, Première Urgence Internationale supports female health workers in the health centres where we intervene. Portrait of Dr Khadija, a woman doctor who consults with Yemeni women.

The Central African Republic has suffered multiple political and security crises since 2013. These crises adversely affected the population's access to basic services, particularly health services, which were already fragile and dysfunctional before the crisis. In 2021, more than half of the country's population, or 2,571,343 people, were in need of humanitarian health assistance, 17% more than in 2020.

The Global Handwashing Day (October 15) was celebrated in the village of Adoumindou, located 7km from Ndélé in the Bamingui-Bangoran prefecture. It is one of the villages that benefited from the family latrines of the Iboungbi project (multisectoral development in the North-East of CAR): 60 latrines were built there.This year's global theme was "the power is in our hands".

The Kidal region, once the epicenter of the political and security crisis in Mali, has experienced a relative lull since 2019. However, for the past few months, Kidal has been facing the arrival of more and more displaced populations from the north and center of the country, due to the deterioration of the context in these areas. Indeed, some communities are forced to leave their villages and abandon their resources for security reasons, and take refuge in calmer regions such as Kidal.

In the western part of Iraq, Ramadi and Fallujah are two iconic cities of Anbar governorate that were captured by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) between 2014 and 2015. In 2016, the Iraqi armed forces and their allies launched a military campaign that aimed to recapture ISIL-held areas. The targeted areas included these two cities, which are in a state of widespread destruction. In a region already largely ruined by the Iraq War years earlier, everything has to be rebuilt and the population is challenged to meet its most basic needs.