Simon Burroughs is an MSF coordinator currently in Benghazi, Libya with MSF's emegency team.
Interview MSF Coordinator Libya Benghazi by
MSF_uk
Transcript:
What MSF has been doing over the last three days is first of all assessing the medical structures in Benghazi town itself. Actually on the journey from the border to Benghazi we also stopped to assess medical facilities in Al Bayda.
And then what we have been doing after since the assessment in Benghazi, we moved to a place called Ajdabyia, which is about 160 km from Benghazi towards Tripoli and had a look at the medical facilities there.
Generally speaking the Libyan health facilities are very well staffed and very well equipped, however over the last few days, they had to deal with quite nasty situations.
They’d never had to deal with this kind of situation in Benghazi ever before so initially they were overwhelmed, I mean, the figures that we are getting from the doctors and from the various hospitals in Benghazi: over a 100 dead and over a thousand wounded.
This is obviously quite a shock to their system, but at the time we arrived on the 25th, they’d managed to deal with this initial influx and were coming back to a phase of normality.
The major priorities for MSF today are to continue to supply medical equipment and supplies as needed. Also, we have a surgeon and an anaesthetist to come and assess some of the surgery cases to see if they need any more intervention.
As the situation develops we’ll see what we can provide in terms of support to medical facilities as the country opens up to the West.