Brukti has been forced to flee Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region, alongside thousands of others. She worked as a nurse for four years before the violence erupted and forced her to flee her village close to Adwa. “When I heard that people were being killed, I fled together with my son. We saw dead bodies in some of the villages that we travelled through”. As soon as they reached Mekelle, she immediately started volunteering at the site where they found shelter, by providing vital healthcare to other displaced.

Now Brukti is volunteering in a small room stone cottage in Mekelle where over 1,800 displaced people are living, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). UNHCR has also established ‘protection desks’ in 38 sites in Shire and Mekelle, where displaced people can access vital services and information get psychosocial counselling by UNHCR staff.
Brukti and 15 other trained nurses are volunteering at the small makeshift health centre with the lead doctor from the Regional Health Bureau in Mekelle: “I’m happy to help my community in this critical time, but my hope is for peace to be restored so that I can hopefully see the rest of my family again,” Brutki says.

Across the Tigray region, the conflict has severely impacted the lives of refugees, internally displaced people (IDP) and civilians. In fact, the humanitarian situation in the Tigray region is worsening dramatically due to the constrained delivery of humanitarian assistance. Both refugees and the internally displaced are experiencing a lack of food, water and proper shelter. Despite the challenges and the ongoing hostilities, humanitarian partners continue to scale up the response but according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) at least 5.2 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance.

Sources:
https://www.unhcr.org/news/stories/2021/7/60daa5954/displaced-nurses-provide-vital-health-care-others-displaced-ethiopias-tigray.html  
https://data2.unhcr.org/en/working-group/284 
https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/09/1099022