Five kilometres southwest of downtown Nairobi in Kenya, the sprawling Kibera slum is a sea of mud and corrugated iron shacks with small, narrow rooms that house entire families.
More than 60 percent of diseases among Kibera patients are linked to hygiene and sanitation conditions. People most commonly come to MSF clinics in Kibera for pneumonia, respiratory diseases, diarrhoeal diseases, skin diseases and worms. These are all diseases with clear connections to poor hygiene, poor sanitation and overcrowded living conditions where diseases are easily transmitted. There are far too few toilets, the homes are small and congested, clean water is scarce, and access to free or affordable quality healthcare is critically limited.
Urban Survivors is a multimedia project by Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in collaboration with the NOOR photo agency and Darjeeling Productions, highlighting the critical humanitarian and medical needs that exist in slums the world over.
Photo: Nairobi, Kenya © Francesco Zizola/NOOR
