Chechnya

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is starting the process of gradually handing over its tuberculosis (TB) program in Chechnya.

New York, December 20, 2007 — People struggling to survive violence, forced displacement, and disease in the Central African Republic (CAR), Somalia, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere often went underreported in the news this year and much of the past decade, according to the 10th annual list of the “Top Ten” Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories, released today by the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

For many people living in the Russian Republic of Chechnya, physical scars and poorly healed wounds remain a painful reminder of the awful war that they have, and continue to, endure. In an attempt to help them rebuild their lives, MSF has recently opened a reconstructive surgery project in the republic's main reference hospital, Hospital Number 9.

Janeta is a gynecologist working in Ingushetia. She started with MSF in 2000 and works alongside a pediatrician and two nurses in two different kompaktniki (spontaneous settlements), which she visits twice each week.

Pressured by Russian and Ingushetian authorities, many Chechen refugees in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia have headed back home. Denis Lemasson, MSF's program manager in the region, was in Grozny on February 11. Here is his account.

by Kaz de Jong, Saskia van der Kam, Nathan Ford, Sally Hargreaves, R van Oosten, Debbie Cunningham, Gerry Boots

MSF received the joyful news early in the morning of February 4, 2001: our friend and colleague Kenneth Gluck had been released unharmed 26 days after having been kidnapped in Chechnya.

Although Russian authorities have announced a cease-fire for a few hours a day in Grozny and the setting up of 'humanitarian corridors' to allow civilians to 'safely' leave zones and cities that are under attack, the latest information gathered by MSF from Chechen refugees in Georgia refutes the reality of these measures.