West Coast Office: 2525 Main St., Ste. 110 Santa Monica, CA 90405 Tel: (310) 399-0049 F: (310) 399-8177 E-mail: Lorna Chiu www.doctorswithoutborders.org

Patrick Nagle, RN, BSN?

San Francisco Nurse Runs Feeding Centers for Burmese refugees in Bangladesh

Emergency Room Nurse, Patrick Nagle, recently returned from a nine-month health care humanitarian assignment with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Nagle was sent to supervise and manage feeding centers in well-established refugee camps in Bangladesh because of a chronic malnutrition problem.

"When I arrived, I learned that 250,000 Rohingya refugees fled their homes in Myanmar (Burma) from persecution by the military regime over ten years ago, and settled in tents and refugee camps set up by the UN and international humanitarian organizations", says Nagle. Over a decade, well over 230,000 of those refugees have been returned to Myanmar under a questionable ‘voluntary’ program. Nagle and his health care team, consisting of a physician, project coordinator and 60 local staff, provided health care and nutrition to the 20,000 Rohingyas left in the camps.

Each day, Nagle visited MSF’s three feeding centers to check on his patients and treat the serious cases. Most of his patients were low birth weight babies, children, and pregnant and lactating mothers. Nagle also spent time educating mothers on nutrition in pregnancy and childhood nutrition. "The rate of malnutrition in the camps was extraordinary, says Nagle. (MSF conducted a survey in Nov. 2002 and found 62% of the refugee population suffered from chronic malnutrition.) "What was frustrating was we would see some children being admitted a second time with the same condition. I mean, we treated them, saw our patients reach a targeted weight, then released them, only to see them readmitted...frustrating, esp. when our feeding centers were always full with around 250 patients."

Nagle completed his days by making rounds in MSF’s in- and out-patient clinics and checking in with the local outreach workers and health educators to learn of the day’s health issues, which were mostly malaria and respiratory infections.

Today, Nagle works as an emergency nurse for San Francisco General Hospital. He thinks about his project all the time especially because it was such a politically charged situation. MSF had provided basic health care and nutritional programs in these camps for 11 years. The Bangladesh Ministry of Health has taken over the health care of the refugees. When Nagle returned to SF last September, MSF issued an international press release to urge the Government of Bangladesh and UNHCR to uphold their responsibility to provide protection and adequate health care to the refugees.

Nagle sums up his experience by stating that he is equally satisfied with his clinical and advocacy work. "If MSF was not working in the camps, we would not have been able alleviate the suffering of thousands of refugees and to report to the world on the alarming chronic malnutrition rates, the atrocious living conditions in the camps, the barriers to working and even growing food, and the coercion to repatriate," says Nagle.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an independent, humanitarian organization that delivers emergency medical care to people in over 85 countries. MSF treats victims of armed conflict, epidemics, natural and man-made disasters, and others who lack health care due to social or geographic isolation. Each year, more than 2,500 volunteer doctors, nurses, other medical professionals, logistics experts, water/sanitation engineers, and administrators join more than 15,000 locally hired staff to provide medical aid in more than 85 countries.

On October 15, 1999 Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières received the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize for its "pioneering humanitarian work on several continents."