International (Page 23)

Jean-Baptiste Lacombe recently joined the Canadian Red Cross as Rapid Response Manager with the Emergency Response Team. He answered some questions for us about working as an international aid worker and his new role with the Red Cross.

Every day, thousands of people are looking for family members who are missing. On August 30, humanitarians around the world are recognizing the Day of the Disappeared, which acknowledges the need to identify and document the fate of people who are missing and to provide support for family members left behind. 

She sits cross legged on the cot, amid the many other mothers in the crowded tent. She has a smile that can light up a room. She uses it to bravely mask her concern. Two of her three children have fallen sick to bacteria ravaging many villages across eastern Africa. Acute watery diarrhea/cholera has taken its toll on the bodies of six-month-old Abdi who lies in his mother’s lap, and on six-year-old Zakaria, who curls up lethargically at the foot of the cot, barely able to lift his head.

Jenna Atchison is a nurse from Ottawa. This year, she traveled to east Africa to work in a cholera treatment centre. Jenna took a moment to share her experience with us. 

Ethiopia, Iraq, Kenya, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, all countries with varying degrees of instability; all countries in which travellers expose themselves to a certain amount of risk; and all countries in which Colleen Laginskie has worked.

Bashiir sits upright on his cot inside a crowded cholera ward. “It is the first time I am sitting like this in a long time,” says Bashiir. “With my illness, I could not sit, I could not stand. For three days and three nights, I was vomiting. My entire body was aching. Those were black days.”
 Bashiir is at a treatment centre in eastern Africa for acute watery diarrhea/cholera set up by the Canadian Red Cross, with support from the Government of Canada.

After fleeing violence and conflict in Rwanda over 20 years ago, Jean-Damasc̀ene Hakizimana and his mother have been reunited through the Red Cross Restoring Family Links program. 

Canadian Red Cross aid worker Dr. Kim de Souza shares her experience working in the Mediterranean Sea, aboard The Responder. In the four weeks she spent aboard, Kim provided medical care to rescued migrants who had endured treacherous conditions at sea.