The aid workers were ordered out of Sudan last week, shortly after the decision of the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for president Omaral-Bashir, who is accused of orchestrating atrocities against civilians in Darfur.
Hans van de Weerd, director of the Dutch branch of the international NGO, feels dismayed, despondent and desperate about the enforced withdrawal. Because the hospital at Muhajariva can no longer function without the foreign doctors, some 70,000 people in the area are now without medical services.
Leaving patients behind
The conditions under which Doctor Addie Romme had to work in Darfur recently were grim. There was no accommodation for her, so she had to sleep in the hospital where she worked. Working in Sudan never easy for international aid organisations such as MSF, but the NGO wasn't expecting that it would have to leave the country. For Romme, it was very painful to leave her patients behind.
"I'm very concerned about these patients. On the morning of the evacuation we had dozens of patients in the hospital. On a normal day I would have discharged some of them, but others definitely needed further treatment. I advised them to go to Nyala, a large town about an hour away, but I know that some of the patients will never make it there," she says.
Apart from the care of these patients, MSF also fears for the health of hundreds of thousands of people in the region. Because of the departure of so many aid workers, they must now cope without basic facilities such as clean drinking water and food. Dutch MSF director Hans van de Weerd is also afraid of a possible outbreak of meningitis, an infectious disease which can lead to death without treatment.
Responsibility
Van de Weerd: "There are 450,000 people in Darfur who, at the moment, can't go to a doctor if they're sick. What that will mean in the longer term depends on whether the Sudanese authorities take responsibility for their own people. Or whether they give permission to other organisations - which might include our sister organisations - to take over our activities in that region."
Officially, no reason has been given for the decision of the Sudanese government to show the door to MSF. But it seems obvious that the order is related to the decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to issue an international arrest warrant for Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir. It is the ICC's first attempt to prosecute a sitting head of state.
Despite the fact that MSF has promised not to cooperate in any way with the ICC, it must leave the country along with thirteen other international aid agencies. Van de Weerd doesn't think that his organisation will be able to make a swift return to Darfur. If he does receive permission, he first wants an explanation of why he was forced to leave the country.
