Bachir has no father and has been on the streets since he was an infant. He was born in a small village 200 km from Zinder. Zinder is a small town (or a large village!), that lies 960 km from the capital Niamey, in Niger. I found him during my 6 months humanitarian stay in Niger with the Swiss Médecins Sans Frontières, in September 2006. He lived and fed himself on the street…

I was immediately very touched by his situation at the brink of survival and all the hardship he had to go through, day after day... He has had a particularly severe fungal infection on his scalp, ever since he was a child. Year after year, this 'mark of his misery' descended towards his neck and face… The young man is an adolescent now, but he does not know precisely in which year he was born… like the vast majority of Africans in this country, the poorest in the world, with a population of more than 15 million, 80% of the surface of which is desert area.

Bachir and I call out to you from our heart, asking you for your generosity, by helping us to finance his new medical treatment, which is made at a CHUV laboratory in Lausanne, as well as his local care dispensed in Niger. The diagnosis was made by the chief physician of the children's hospital of the CHUV, Dr Gehri, to whom I supplied a sample of Bachir's affected skin in January 2009 so that he could run medical tests on it.

I personally delivered his new treatment to him in December 2009. Bachir gets treated in the little field dispensary of the Sœurs de l’Assomption in Zinder since 2008. The Association has been sponsoring his daily meals, the care provided by the nuns, schooling and sewing lessons, since January 2010.

A big thank you in advance for your interest in our humanitarian cause and your heartfelt generosity. For your information, Bachir weighed 40 kilos on August 30th 2009.

Isabelle Macheret
isa.macheret@bluewin.ch

> Description of Bachir's condition
> Photos Bachir Bachir's condition
> The dispensary