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Chad :: Sudanese refugee crisis In August UNHCR reported an influx of thousands of refugees to Chad fleeing ongoing fighting in their home province Darfur in Western Sudan. Médecins Sans Frontières sent an exploratory team to Biltine in Eastern Chad to make a first and independent assessment of the situation. A few days later an international team of mainly doctors, nurses and logisticians were on their way to Chad. Soon after a cargo plane with about 33 tons of relief items followed. Two experienced Médecins Sans Frontières members, Virginie Chauderlier, a French nurse and Anibal Ordenes, a Chilean logistician, flew from N’Djamena, the capital of Chad, to the provincial capital of Abéché in the East of the country. From there it took them another seven hours driving in a jeep to reach the remote border area.
The situation in some of the villages they visit is dramatic. In the small towns Tiné and Birak alone, Virginie and Anibal found about 11.000 Sudanese refugees. 75% of them are women and children. It is likely that there are more refugees in the surrounding villages. There is still a constant influx from Sudan. "Many of the refugees have only the shirt they are wearing”, reports Virginie Chauderlier. “There is hardly any shelter to protect them from the cold nights, daytime temperatures which rise to 45 degrees, or the daily heavy showers as it is rainy seaon. There is not enough food and some of the children are already showing signs of malnutrition. People have no clean water. They either drink water straight from unclean rivers or they simply dig holes in search for it. The refugees live in close proximity to eachother and vaccination coverage is close to zero. Therefore the danger of epidemic outbreaks is high. Just the idea of it is a nightmare, because people here have no access to medical help. In Birak there is not even a single aspirin to be found." Médecins Sans Frontières reacted immediately. We decided to open health centres in Tiné and Birak as soon as possible and to coordinate closely between the Médecins Sans Frontières team in N’Djamena and the Médecins Sans Frontières’ office in Brussels.
These were all essential items as there wasn't any facilities in the area where we were going to work. During their assessment Virginie and Anibal had identified a suitable area for working and living in Tiné and Birak. It was nothing more than a small piece of land surrounded by little walls but would be sufficient to set up the equipment and start working. They had also found a house in the provincial capital of Abéché that was to be their inventory base during the emergency. Due to the volatile security situation in the border areas we try not to have too many supplies in the health centres, to avoid the risk of becoming a target for looting. Three cargo flights were needed to bring all material to Abéché, the Médecins Sans Frontières team squeezing into a small place behind the unlocked cockpit, two at a time on simple plastic chairs which slid slowly during taking off and landing. At the airport of Abéché, Reynald Clavien is already waiting for us together with the local Médecins Sans Frontières team. Reynald is administrator and will be based in Abéché and provide the two medical teams with all necessary supplies. He has only arrived here some days ago but has already established important infrastructure. In the house he hired construction is still ongoing and there is nearly no furniture. The team will sleep on the stone floor on mattresses that came in with the cargo. We will use mosquito nets simply fixed on the walls with a piece of tape. Saira, a local lady, cooks on open fire under a shade in the garden. Nevertheless: a small office with access to electricity and a satellite phone is already installed. The cargo arrived in Abéché at 8.30am and our two logisticians, with the help of daily workers and other team members, unloaded the plane into one truck for Tiné and another for Birak. It took some hours and the temperature was constantly rising. By lunchtime the tarmac of the airstrip seemed to boil. That evening at sunset the daily rain was announced by lightning, thunder, heavy wind and hundreds of grasshoppers and small frogs. They were suddenly everywhere, on our computer keyboards as well as on our dinner plates. The rain shower that followed was so strong that conversation became nearly impossible. We followed the spectacle of our first night in Abéché fascinated, sitting under a small tin roof, safe and dry but thinking of the plight of the refugees, exposed without any protection, in the border area.
» Read another article on Chad
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