Tigray crisis: “People will die without a titanic effort”

Around 60,000 people have now fled violence in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, seeking safety across the border in neighbouring Sudan, while hundreds of thousands more have been displaced within the region itself.

Albert Viñas, an experienced MSF emergency coordinator, has just returned from Ethiopia where he led a team paving the way for our medical response to reach cut-off people in the east and central parts of Tigray.

Here, he describes what he found inside the crisis zone.

"After several attempts, we finally entered the capital of Tigray, Mekele, with our first MSF team on 16 December, more than a month after the violence started. 

The city was quiet. There was electricity, but no basic supplies. The local hospital was running at 30 to 40 percent, with very little medication. Most significantly, there were almost no patients, which is always a very bad sign. 

We evaluated the hospital, with the idea of referring patients there as soon as possible from Adigrat, 120 km to the north.

We then arrived in Adigrat, the second most populous city in Tigray, on 19 December. The situation was very tense and its hospital was in a terrible condition. 

Most of the healthcare staff had left, there were hardly any medicines and there was no food, no water and no money. Some patients who had been admitted with trauma injuries were now malnourished. 

We supplied the hospital with medicines and bought emergency food in the markets that were still open. Together with the remaining hospital staff, we cleaned the building and organised the collection of waste. 

Little by little we rehabilitated the hospital so that it could function as another referral centre.

On 27 December we then entered Adwa and Axum, two towns to the west of Adigrat, in central Tigray. There we found a similar situation: no electricity and no water. All the medicines had been stolen from Adwa general hospital and the hospital furniture and equipment were broken.

Fortunately, the Don Bosco institution in Adwa had converted its clinic into an emergency hospital with a small operating theatre. 

In Axum, the 200-bed university hospital had not been attacked, but it was only operating at 10 percent capacity. 

On roads where the security situation remained uncertain, we trucked food, medicine and oxygen to these hospitals and began to support the most essential medical departments, such as the operating theatres, maternity units and emergency rooms, and to refer critical cases.

If women with complicated deliveries, seriously ill patients and people with appendicitis and trauma injuries can’t get to hospital, you can imagine the consequences. There is a large population suffering, surely with fatal consequences. 

Adigrat hospital has a catchment area of more than one million people and the one in Axum has more than three million. If these hospitals don’t function properly and can’t be accessed, then people die at home. 

And, when the healthcare system is broken, vaccinations, disease detection and nutritional programmes don’t function either. There have been no vaccinations in almost three months, so we fear there will be epidemics soon.

Offering hope

In recent weeks, our mobile medical teams have started visiting areas outside the main cities and we are reopening some healthcare centres. Our presence brings a certain feeling of protection. 

We have seen some health staff returning to work. Only five people attended the first meeting we organised in Adwa hospital, but the second was attended by 15, and more than 40 people came to the third. 

Beyond medical activities, you feel that you offer people some hope: the feeling that things can improve after two months without good news.

Fear and fleeing

In this part of Tigray, there are no large settlements of displaced people – instead, most have taken refuge in the houses of relatives and friends, so many houses now have 20 or 25 people living there together. 

The impact of the violence is visible in the buildings and in the cars with bullet holes. Especially at the beginning, we saw a population locked in their homes and living in great fear. 

Everyone gave us pieces of paper with phone numbers written on them and asked us to convey messages to their families. People don’t even know if their relatives and loved ones are okay because in many places there are still no telephones or telecommunications.

When we arrived in Adigrat, we saw queues of 500 people next to a water truck waiting to get 20 litres of water per family at most. Thankfully, the telephone line was restored in Adigrat just a few days ago. 

The situation is improving little by little, but as we moved westwards to new places we found the same scenario: fewer services, less transport...

We are very concerned about what may be happening in rural areas. We still haven’t been able to go to many places, because access is still difficult, either because of insecurity or because it is hard to obtain authorisation. 

But we know, because community elders and traditional authorities have told us, that the situation in these places is very bad. 

Large areas of Tigray have a very mountainous terrain, with winding roads that climb from 2,000 metres above sea level to 3,000 metres. Cities like Adwa and Axum are built on the fertile highlands, but a large part of the population lives in the mountains and we have heard that there are people who have fled to these more remote areas because of the violence.

Logistical challenges, late responses

The effort of our teams has been titanic at all levels – medical, financial, logistical and human resources. It’s an incredible challenge without telephone or internet. 

At first there were no flights to Mekele and we had to move everything by road from the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, about 1,000 km away. You couldn't make money transfers because the banks were all closed. Yet we managed to start our operations. 

Now, almost three months after the start of the conflict, other organisations are beginning to appear, little by little, in some areas. 

I am struck by how difficult it has been – and continues to be – to access such a vulnerable community in such a densely populated area. Considering the means and capacities possessed by international organisations and the UN, the fact that this is happening is a failure of the humanitarian world. 

We still don’t know the real impact of this crisis, but we have to keep working to find it out as soon as possible."