Ethiopia: Hope attracts the crowds to the MSF feeding centres

In our center in Hadero, we have two structures. We have the OTP(outreach therapeutic programs) and the SFC (Supplementary Feeding Centre).

These are two different kinds of structures because we're finding patients with different levels of malnutrition. So we have very malnourished patients, these we are going to refer to the OTPs.

In this place they are going to get therapeutic food, and their families are going to take some food also.

In the other center, the SFC, we get the moderate malnourished patient. They get another kind of food, specifically for their kind of malnutrition problem. And their family gets food too.

This is very important, because when we treat also these patients who're moderate malnourished, we're avoiding them to become severe or even as sick to be in a risk of death.

They are so many and they are so desperate to get help that sometime they try to be accepted in one OTP and they just try to go to another OTP to be accepted too.

We try to control it a bit because we need to have food for everybody. So we can't double the help for our patients. But they are doing that not because they like to do it, but because they really feel they need it.

Another day in another OTP, we had around 1000 persons around us, just there, under the rain, feeling cold, shivering, because they wanted food. They are not there because they like it. There's really a need and we feel this everyday in every place we are.

We can't admit everybody, so we need to have a criteria. And this is the toughest moment for us when we just say the person she's not fitting our criteria and we could not take her. Even if not all of them are malnourished, many of them are, all of them need food, all of them need food.

We really have the feeling that we can make a strong difference in the life of persons. We feel the impact of our presence everyday. And also we feel this sad feeling of not being able to save everybody.

But definitely one day here seems like a month due to the intensity of the experience we live here.