Juan Carlos Tomasi (MSF)

The memory of oblivion

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), the book La memoria del olvido: una historia gráfica de Médicos Sin Fronteras (Ed. Blume) has been published, which reviews the career of Juan Carlos Tomasi as the organization’s main photographer for almost three decades. Based on the book, this exhibition addresses how the lack of water in some parts of the Sahel -a 5,000-kilometer-long strip of Africa- and the absence of harvests in conflict zones trigger malnutrition, and narrates the consequences that all this has on children and their families.

No epidemic, no war, no deadliest disease: nothing has had a greater impact on human history than hunger. All over the world, thousands of children are suffering because of policies that protect the price of grain in the markets, lack of rain and water, and climate change.

In the Sahel, acute malnutrition and malaria are two diseases that coexist in the hunger season, the so-called soudure. It is a period of scarcity that begins in June, with the arrival of summer, when families’ granaries begin to empty: the grain from the previous harvest is exhausted and the new one has yet to be harvested. In those months, there is nothing to eat: the ghost of hunger lurks and nutritional centers begin to fill up with children. At about the same time, the rains begin to fall heavily and, with them, come the floods. Stagnant water is an ideal breeding ground for the mosquito that spreads malaria. The combination of malaria and malnutrition is lethal, and the leading cause of under-five mortality.

International organizations such as MSF have been working for years to respond to these chronic crises and to reduce child morbidity and mortality.