Climate emergency
WHAT ARE WE SEEING AND DOING ?
#MSFGreece
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Sunday, April 21
15:15 Screening of the thematic section "Human Rights and the Environment"
16:30 Presentation / Discussion
After the screening of the film "Titi – In cyclone’s wake" presented in the "Human Rights and Environment" film section, there will be a discussion with Giorgos Karapanagos, an epidemiologist and Public Health Data Analyst with experience in MSF missions, and director Natasha Blatsiou. The debate is moderated by gynecologist-obstetrician surgeon Mouzalas Ioannis
A lot of the consequences of climate change – floods, drought, severe storms – are not new problems. But the climate emergency is causing an intensification of these events, both in severity and frequency. MSF is already seeing and responding to the health impacts of the people they support:
- In diseases (e.g. malaria)
Increased rainfall appears to increase the number of people affected by vector-borne (insect) diseases such as malaria and dengue fever.
- In malnutrition
Drought and flooding seem to have already affected malnutrition in some of the areas we work in. In southern Madagascar, prolonged drought is severely affecting harvests and access to food, causing an acute food and nutrition crisis, leaving thousands of children seriously ill and pushing entire families into extreme poverty.
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- In conflicts
In sub-Saharan Africa, climate change has contributed to the imbalance of land available to pastoralists and farmers. Competition for resources leads to conflict, increasing violence and insecurity across the region, the consequences of which we respond to by providing medical care. Conflicts, in turn, often cause people to be displaced.
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- In extreme weather conditions
More frequent and severe extreme weather events increase the risk of injuries, infectious diseases and food insecurity. A serious consequence of weather events such as floods, hurricanes and cyclones is displacement. As people lose their homes and crops, they are forced to move. Millions of people are already displaced due to conditions worsened by climate change.
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Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) - translates to Doctors without Borders - in addition to treating people affected by the effects of the climate crisis, are also trying to reduce their own carbon footprint with specific actions.
Titi, a Nigerien nurse who worked for MSF in Madagascar, is the protagonist of the documentary that was created at the initiative of the NGO’s Greek branch " TITI - In cyclone's wake" directed by Natasha Blatsiou [Photo: Nikos Ziogas]
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“Titi – In cyclone’s wake”, directed by Natasha Blatsiou, shot in Madagascar, in collaboration with Doctors Without Borders.
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On the southeastern coast of Madagascar, which is being hit by yet another tropical cyclone, Titi, a Nigerian MSF nurse, travels to hard-to-reach areas and leads her own fight against one of the most devastating consequences of the climate crisis: child malnutrition.
Sweeping in her wake, demanding with her colleagues, tender and deeply devoted to her patients, Titi fights her own fight against child malnutrition every day:
“We didn’t achieve much today” she says, while it’s already night and she tirelessly continues to examine children wearing a night torch on her head.
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Madagascar is one of the most exposed countries in the world to extreme weather events © MSF Greece. Cyclone Freddy, which hit the country in February 2023, was the sixth in a row in 14 months and left behind massive devastation.
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The documentary records the effects on the lives of Malagasy people, who do not have time to recover from the successive climate shocks. Their survival depends on their crops being destroyed. Without food, malnutrition, especially among children, intensifies.
Doctors Without Borders operates programs to address malnutrition.
Director Biography - Natasha Blatsiou
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​Natasha Blatsiou is a documentary filmmaker, writer and producer. She has directed and produced short films and sound documentaries that premiered and were awarded in international documentary festivals. She had a long-standing career as a journalist and researcher for Greek and international media and today she works as a freelancer in the fields of documentary writing, research and filmmaking. Blatsiou was honored as a Fulbright Artist Scholar at Open Documentary Lab/MIT (Boston, 2022-2024) and she was a Fellow at the international artistic research program Onassis AiR (2023). She has attended the documentary summer school of NTFS (London), been a part of the Summer Documentary Lab at UNIONDOCS in Brooklyn (2017) and the European Social Documentary training initiative (2020). She holds a BA in International and European Economics and a MSc in International Relations and Strategy.
Scenes from the documentary illustrate how the once-lush island of Madagascar is turning into a desert from the combined impact of extended drought and massive storms.