Everyday Emergency

In this episode of Everyday Emergency, Nick Owen hears from MSF staff who have been working with some of the populations most vulnerable to changing weather patterns and environmental degredation. Our guests detail the steps MSF is taking to better prepare for future climate crises. We'll also be looking at the ways in which these increasingly significant climate shifts can have a knock-on effect...

In this episode of Everyday Emergency, host Nick Owen takes you through some of the most pivotal MSF moments from the past decade, with firsthand accounts from our staff on the ground. You'll hear about our response to the sheer devastation of the Haiti earthquake, the Ebola outbreak gripping West Africa and how in recent months we've restarted our search and rescue operations in the central Medit...

In this episode of Everyday Emergency we hear about the lived experience of Venezuelan women bearing the brunt of their country's healthcare crisis and the difficulties they continue to face in Colombia. An estimated four million Venezuelans have left their country since the collapse of its political and economic systems, and at least 1.4 million have come to neighbouring Colombia. They are coming...

Yemen is in the grip of war. It is also one of the poorest countries in the world. British anaesthetist Dr Elma Wong has recently returned from her fourth assignment working in the country with MSF. In this episode of Everyday Emergency, we talk to Elma about her time in Mocha, a town on the west coast of Yemen. It sits around halfway between the port cities of Hodeidah to the north and Aden to th...

The Rohingya are a group of people who have lived for centuries in Myanmar. Due to their ethnicity, they are denied citizenship and are one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. Violence and oppression has forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee to countries neighbouring Myanmar, either by land or sea, over the course of many decades. But in August 2017, a brutal campaign of vio...

In this episode of Everyday Emergency, we hear from three MSF medics who have been working in the Syrian city of Raqqa. A former stronghold of the so-called Islamic State, Raqqa is littered with improvised explosive devices and remnants of war that are causing dire consequences for people returning to the city. Doctors Javid Abdelmoneim and Pippa Pett, along with nurse Michael Shek, helped to esta...

Nina Rajani, a doctor from London, has just returned from Iraq. On this week's episode, Nina explains what it took to treat people caught between the vicious spiral of violent conflict and poor health. "Everyday Emergency" is a podcast from MSF. In each episode, we bring you true stories from the frontline of humanitarian emergencies across the world. From the conflict in Syria to the refugee cris...

In the latest episode of our Everyday Emergency podcast, we speak to Emily Gilbert. An MSF project coordinator from London, Emily has spent her entire career working in conflict zones. Whether she’s in the Middle East or Central Africa, Emily’s main roles are to make sure her team is safe and that the project she’s managing runs as smoothly as possible. With a typical MSF project having 4-12 inter...

"You’ve got to be in a really, really awful situation to think ‘yes, I’m going to put my nine-month old child onto this rubber boat, because that’s the best option to me at the moment’." Last month, our host spent time on Aquarius, a search and rescue ship MSF operates alongside SOS Méditerranée. During his time on the ship as a communications officer, Nick captured the sounds of life on board - i...

Our regular host, Nick Owen, is somewhere in the middle of the Mediterranean sea this week. He's on board the Aquarius doing search and rescue with Dr Connor Kenny. The pair are going to be capturing a live rescue for the next episode. In the meantime, we're going to take a look back at an episode featuring Connor from Series 1. He's being interviewed about his time in Greece caring for refugees a...

On this week's episode of our Everyday Emergency podcast, we meet Besh, a Kurdish asylum seeker living in London, UK. Besh and his family lived peacefully in a village just outside Mosul, raising livestock on their farm. In June 2014, everything changed. ISIS captured Mosul. The Iraqi army withdrew. And the militant group were headed straight for their village. Fleeing for their lives, Besh, his m...

"I wasn't prepared. It left a scar. It was the first time I was exposed to so much avoidable death." On this week's episode of our Everyday Emergency podcast, we meet Javid Abdelmoneim, an emergency doctor living in London, UK. Five months into his second assignment with MSF responding to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the job was taking it’s toll on Javid. But just before things would get worse, a...

* Please be advised that this episode deals with sensitive issues relating to sexual violence and may be unsuitable for some listeners. In our latest episode of Everday Emergency, we meet Courtney Bercan - an MSF nurse who worked on one of our search and rescue ships in the Mediterranean. In this episode we hear a story written by Courtney while on board, about a patient whose story still haunts h...

Elizabeth Wangeci's story is a remarkable one. Against the odds, Elizabeth, from Nairobi, was the first person to survive one of the deadliest forms of drug-resistant tuberculosis in Kenya. In the first episode of the second series of Everyday Emergency, on World TB Day 2017 we speak to Elizabeth nearly one year after being cured. We also hear from Mark Sherlock, an MSF TB doctor who works not far...

The 3rd of October will be remembered as one of the darkest days in MSF's history. On this day in 2015, US airstrikes killed 42 people and destroyed the MSF trauma hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. In this special episode of Everyday Emergency, we look back on the attack one year on with Dr Kass Thomas – an intensive care specialist from Australia – who was in the hospital on the night of the attac...

In our tenth and final edition of this series, we follow on from where our Mediterranean search and rescue episode left off. We speak to Conor Kenny, a doctor who has been caring for refugees in Greece. Conor also talks about the eviction he witnessed of thousands of refugees from a camp in the village of Idomeni. We'll be back with a fresh new series in early 2017 (and a few special editions in b...

Working in five countries in the last two years, from fighting cholera in South Sudan to helping migrants and refugees in Greece, it's fair to say Pierre Trbovic has seen his fair share of Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders' (MSF) work. According to Pierre, the hardest job he had to do as an MSF anthropologist and health promoter was stand on the gates of our ELWA 3 Ebola management...

Earlier this year, paediatric nurse Johanna Bosowski embarked on her first mission with Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) to Agok, in northern South Sudan. Working on the neonatal ward, she encountered a young patient with a disease she had never seen in the UK before. In most developed countries, thanks to a vaccine, cases of tetanus are extremely rare. But, in 2013 (the late...

Despite ranking alongside HIV as the leading cause of death by infectious disease worldwide, the global response to TB has been found wanting. Because the drugs used in standard treatment have not changed in over 40 years, they are becoming less and less effective due to increasingly high levels of resistance from the bacteria. In the seventh episode of Everyday Emergency, Australian doctor Amrita...

In our sixth episode we meet US gynaecologist Veronica Ades who has returned from her third MSF mission. In Precious Baby, Veronica describes the precarious situation for expecting mothers in the city of Aweil, South Sudan. You can read more from Veronica about her time in South Sudan, as well as her other mission in Jordan, on the MSF blog:  blogs.msf.org/en/staff/blogs/love-labor-loss "Ever...

In our fifth episode we meet Canadian doctor Simon Bryant who last year spent his summer on MSF and MOAS's search and rescue ship, the Phoenix. In 'One day, 52 senseless deaths', Simon describes his most challenging day on the Mediterranean. You can read more from Simon about his time on the search and rescue vessel on the MSF blog:  blogs.msf.org/en/staff/blogs/moving-stories "Everyday Emerg...

In our fourth episode we meet British doctor Emily Wise who, in 2013, travelled to Uzbekistan - a country with particularly high drug-resistant tuberculosis rates. In 'The Darkest Hour', Emily describes in heartbreaking detail the final minutes of a TB patient's life. You can read more from Emily about her time in Uzbekistan on her blog:  blogs.msf.org/en/staff/blogs/one-steppe-beyond "Everyd...

In this episode we meet Sandra Smiley, a Canadian communications officer who spent 2015 with MSF in Kinshasa, the capital of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Sandra travelled across the country, relaying to the world news of under-reported health crises and meeting patients like Clémentine. In our chat, we discover Sandra has made an inspiring career move. You can read more from Sandra about he...

In this episode we meet Scottish nurse Michael Shek, from Dumfries. Michael has recently returned from his second mission in South Sudan, the world's youngest country in the midst of a civil war. We hear Michael's story of his time in the northern town of Bentiu and he tells us about an incredible moment saving the life of a boy and his uncle at 10,000 feet. You can read Michael's story and see pi...

Benjamin Black, an obstetrics doctor from London, UK, was on his first ever shift for Doctors Without Borders in Sierra Leone as Ebola swept through the country. When a pregnant woman arrived at the hospital displaying all the classic symptoms of Ebola, Benjamin was faced with a nightmarish 24 hour shift that would push his nerves to the limit. To read more from Benjamin, visit his blog: 'May the...