More than 8000 people stood in long lines in New York City recently, not in anticipation of a concert or a ticket to a hot Broadway show, but to imagine themselves as refugees. In Central Park and Prospect Park, Brooklyn, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) USA set up A Refugee Camp in the Heart of the City, an interactive, educational exhibit composed of photographs and stations that represent a typical refugee camp, with real field materials used by MSF. The tents and other temporary shelters show the challenges of safety and simple survival forthose displaced by war and conflict: how to get clean water (4-19 L per day, instead of the 380 L used daily by most Americans), food, and treatment for the diseases that are all too common in such environments. Visitors, many of them school children, were shown different types of shelters and latrines, tasted a high-protein emergencyration biscuit, and learned about cholera outbreaks, mass vaccination programmes, and ways to identify and prevent malnutrition. Spectators also had to negotiate models of landmines, representing some of the 45 million landmines that threatenthe lives and limbs of innocent people in more than 80 countries.
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