By Nita Bhalla, NEW DELHI (AlertNet) - Aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has denied abandoning traumatised war survivors in Sri Lanka by closing down a mental health project in the north. Despite "massive needs", the decision was made because MSF no longer deems it an emergency, the medical charity said. MSF announced on April 5 that it was shutting down a programme counselling survivors of the Indian Ocean island's almost three-decade-long conflict, most of whom witnessed the deaths of loved ones. "There are still clearly massive mental health needs, but we felt that this was not something that MSF could continue as it requires longer-term support," Katrien Coppens, MSF’s Sri Lanka operations manager, told AlertNet by phone from Amsterdam.

MSF, April 3, 2012 - After 18 months of activity, the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) mental health program that provided counseling to people resettled in Kilinochchi district, in the north of Sri Lanka, ended in April 2012. In that time, 454 people suffering from psychological trauma related to conflict and resettlement received one-to-one counseling. A further 101 people took part in group counseling sessions, and 113 people received advice on handling day-to-day issues. Counseling teams also ran 333 awareness sessions on child abuse, attended by 7,163 school-age children, parents, teachers, and community members.

MSF, 1 March 2012 - PARIS/COLOMBO—The medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is concerned about an interview suggesting that it was present in 2009 in Sri Lanka’s war zone and that it received surrendering militants to be treated. MSF made numerous requests to the government for access to the battle zone in northern Sri Lanka and these requests were repeatedly denied, despite MSF’s extremely serious concerns about the fate of civilian populations who were trapped in the heavy fighting. In this interview published in India on February 6 and reproduced in the Sri Lankan media, Sri Lankan secretary of defense M. Gotabaya Rapjapaksa is purported to have said that MSF-France teams were present in the battle zone during the fighting.